Motion to Discharge--S.J. Res. 111

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, in 1978, between my junior and senior years in college, I hitchhiked through Israel and the West Bank. I made Israeli friends. I was invited to stay at a kibbutz. I explored the old city of Jerusalem. I negotiated the ancient tunnel built by King Hezekiah in the face of advancing armies. I climbed a snake path to the top of Masada. I swam in the Sea of Galilee and the Red Sea and the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

I was so impressed by the energy for building a new nation, for planting forests, for making the desert bloom with new irrigation systems, constructing cities and roads.

And, in addition, peace was on the horizon. Nine months before my visit in November 1977, Anwar Sadat had visited Jerusalem to address the Knesset and pursue a path to peace.

And then, just weeks after I left, he was shaking hands with Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter at Camp David, and a peace treaty was signed the following year in March.

I was all in on America standing in partnership with this new nation perched on a little sliver of land surrounded by hostile neighbors. And I voted here in the Senate time and again for economic support for Israel, for military support for Israel.

I have believed in the vision that it was the right way to help Israel thrive, the best path to peace and security. As many of us reasoned, if Israel's economy was thriving and their military strength ensured their security, they could, with confidence, negotiate a secure and peaceful future with their neighbors. They could, with confidence, negotiate parameters for a Palestinian State so the Palestinians could thrive as well.

Not so long ago, just over a decade, I traveled to Israel with former Senator Mark Begich of Alaska and Kay Hagan of North Carolina, and we met around a little table with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. And at that time, now 12 years ago, he expounded eloquently on his thesis that the only path for Israel's peace and prosperity was two states for two people.

In the dozen years since, much has changed. Prime Minister Netanyahu has become a public and vocal opponent of a Palestinian State. Israel has engaged in a de facto annexation of the West Bank, land essential for a Palestinian State. They have done this through settlements. They have done this through legalizing outposts. They have created innumerable checkpoints. They have created settler-only roads.

In addition, Netanyahu has formed his government now with Bezalel Smotrich, as Minister of Finance, someone who has said the Palestinian people do not exist and called for a Palestinian town to be erased; Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security, celebrated Baruch Goldstein's slaughter of 29 Palestinians at the Cave of Patriarchs massacre in 1994.

Today, the policies of the Netanyahu government are very different than the policies 12 years before. Under this government, attacks by Israel's West Bank settlers against Palestinian villages have become more frequent, violent, and often condoned by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Events on October 7, a year ago, took a terrible turn. Hamas terrorists attacked Israeli communities. They slaughtered 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children. They abducted 240 hostages, and the whole world was with Israel. We recalled 9/11. We grieved with Israel. We grieved with the Jewish communities in our home State. And we defended Israel's right to respond with a campaign targeted at destroying Hamas.

But I am here on the floor today because the way a war is conducted matters. And Israel's bombing campaign, described by President Biden as indiscriminate, has reduced Gaza to rubble and ruin. This destroyed most of the infrastructure needed for survival: schools, hospitals, homes, the power system, the communications phone system, the internet system, the water system, the transportation system.

Most significantly, the bombing campaign has killed tens of thousands of women, children, and seniors. It has seriously injured more than 100,000 Palestinians living in Gaza.

And Israel has chosen to restrict humanitarian aid. The consequences of that are that food and clean water are woefully short; medical supplies are minimal; and the specter of starvation haunts Gaza. The indiscriminate bombing and the obstruction of humanitarian aid violate the laws of war.

Now, President Biden and his team have consistently pressed the Netanyahu government to change tracks. They recognize that it is difficult in the setting in Gaza where Hamas imbeds itself but even so have argued to Israel that the campaign against Hamas could be much more targeted with far fewer civilian casualties. But the Netanyahu government has rejected this appeal. And Biden and his team have pushed to open the gates to Gaza, have Israel open the gates to Gaza, and to massively increase humanitarian aid. And, again, the Netanyahu government has rejected this appeal.

In mid-October, just last month, Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin renewed their appeal. They warned the Netanyahu government that they must increase the amount of humanitarian aid within 30 days to comply with U.S. law. And they wrote in that letter that the amount of assistance entering Gaza in September was the lowest of any month in the last year.

They laid out in this letter a whole series of horrific conditions that need to be addressed, just as they had argued for the same for the previous year. The result of that has simply been minimal to no action.

In November, a major evaluation was summarized in a letter by the principals of the Inner Agencies Standing Committee. These are groups like the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Oxfam and UNICEF and the World Food Programme, headed by Cindy McCain, and the World Health Organization.

These leaders who have folks on the ground, who have lots of experts evaluating the situation, they recognize this. They summarized that the situation unfolding in North Gaza is apocalyptic. And they go on to talk about the schools serving as shelters having been bombed, about rescue teams being deliberately attacked, and more.

As I described at the start of my remarks, I have, since my first trip to Israel in 1978, been all in on the special partnership between the United States and Israel, on economic support, on security support, in the belief that our partnership would maximize Israel's confidence in pursuing peace and security. But the actions of the last decade have shattered that analysis.

The Netanyahu government is systematically undermining the possibility of a Palestinian State through its settlement checkpoints, its outposts, its settler-only highways. It is conducting its war campaign in Gaza in a fashion that is producing massive civilian deaths and injuries, conditions that aid organizations consistently described as the worst they have seen anywhere in the world.

I believe that not only is this horrific for the Palestinians, but this is absolutely not in the best interest of Israel's future. The actions of the Netanyahu government are burning through a massive reservoir of good will that was overflowing after October 7. It is undoing the improved relationship with Arab neighbors won through the Abraham Accords.

It is damaging because of our connection to Israel through military arms, our advocacy and legitimacy campaigning for human rights around the world.

So I ask you, what do you do when a good friend, a partner, heads off on a disastrous course?

President Biden and his team responded by providing proposals and encouragement to get back on course, but those were rejected. So now we must weigh in here in this Chamber. And many in this Chamber may say: Let's just continue the past; let's not see the horrific circumstances in Gaza; let's not observe the systematic takeover of the West Bank; let's ignore all that and continue with this very different rightwing government without ever raising an eyebrow.

I disagree. I think that true partners do not stand idly by when their partners go way off track in destructive ways and, thus, that we should not continue to provide the munitions that we are voting on today.

We cannot remain silent in the face of Netanyahu's strategy. We must not continue to provide offensive weapons that make the United States complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the injury of 100,000 more innocents. Thus, I will choose to honor American law and respect international law and support Israel's best, long-term interests to thrive by voting to block these three weapons transfers up for consideration today.

I was fabulously impressed by Israel when I hitchhiked around the country in 1978--impressed by their can-do spirit, impressed by the future of peace with Egypt and the possibility of peace with every neighbor. I look forward to seeing that vision of peace and security realized, and my vote today supports that vision.

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