Washington, D.C.--Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY-17) issued the following statement on the floor of the House of Representatives on March 15, 2010 regarding U.S./Israeli relations. This is in response to Vice President Joe Biden’s visit and the announcement of the construction of housing in Jerusalem coincided, leading to a number of statements made by both United States and Israeli leaders. The speech can also be viewed here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X73AMJeGM1k

STATEMENT BY CONGRESSMAN ELIOT ENGEL, OF NEW YORK on THE U.S.-ISRAEL RELATIONSHIP
March 15, 2010

Madam Speaker, I rise this evening to reaffirm the strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Both of our countries have shared values. Both of our countries are democracies. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. I know there have been some difficulties during the past few days.

When Vice President Biden visited Israel, there was an announcement of the expansion of a neighborhood in North Jerusalem. The timing of that announcement was wrong, but I don't think that we should blow the timing of that announcement out of proportion. We should not have a disproportionate response to Israel. We need to be careful and measured in our response, and I think we all have to take a step back.

The relationship remains rock solid. The Obama administration and the administration of Prime Minister Netanyahu have been cooperating on a number of things: containing Iran, the Goldstone Report, and making sure that Israel retains its qualitative military edge in the region. And there has been good cooperation between our two administrations, the Obama administration and the Netanyahu administration. But to seem to question the very nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship and to put it in personal terms in a very public way will not contribute to peace in the Middle East. Rather, it's the contrary. It will cause the Palestinians to dig in their heels, thinking that the Americans can just deliver the Israelis.
Last year, when there was public pressure being put on Israel not to expand settlements, there was no simultaneous public pressure being put on the Palestinians, and we saw that the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas just sat back, didn't make any concessions, didn't say that he would do anything positively to further peace talks, and just thought that the United States would wring concessions out of Israel.

The fact of the matter is that the Israelis have been welcoming peace talks with the Palestinians. The Israelis have said they would sit down and have face-to-face talks for peace with the Palestinians. That's what you do when you have peace. Instead, the Palestinians have refused to sit with the Israelis, and Senator Mitchell is proposing to shuttle back and forth between the Palestinian side and the Israeli side to have negotiations, but not direct negotiations.
We need to be careful. If we criticize Israel for doing what we think was wrong, then we need to also criticize the Palestinians when they do things wrong. Just recently, the Palestinians named a square in Ramallah for a terrorist who killed 30-some-odd Israelis. I didn't hear any criticism of the Palestinian side. When the Palestinians dig in their heels and say they won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state, I didn't hear any criticism of Palestinians.

So all I am saying, Madam Speaker, is that we need to not only reaffirm the strength of our ties between our two countries, but we also need to understand that in a relationship between friends, as in family, there will be some disagreements. We need to be careful about how we voice those disagreements in public.

Let me say that harsh words are never a replacement for working together, but I think that harsh words can sometimes make us understand that only by working together can we confront the things that we both know need to be confronted--the scourge of terrorism, the thing that all nations understand emanates in the Middle East from radical forces, and those are the kinds of fights that Israel has every single day fighting terrorism. We learned about terrorism on this soil on 9/11. Israel has to deal with it every day.

So let me just say in conclusion that I think we need to take a step back. We need to reaffirm all the things that bring our two countries together. We in the United States understand that our best friend in the Middle East is Israel, and we need to continue with Israel. When we have disagreements, we have to talk about them, but we have to always understand that only by working together can we have peace in the Middle East.