RAMALLAH/JERUSALEM, 24 April 2008 — Israel was tightlipped yesterday over the arrest in the United States of an 84-year-old American suspected of providing it with US military secrets in the 1980s, a new case that has opened old wounds.
“We received an official update from the Americans. We are following the developments,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said, a day after suspect Ben-Ami Kadish made an initial appearance in a federal court in New York.
The case, linked to the Jonathan Pollard spy scandal that has been an irritant in the US-Israel alliance, raised fears in Israel it would cast a pall over President George W. Bush’s visit next month to celebrate the Jewish state’s 60th birthday.
But Environment Minister Gideon Ezra, a former senior security official, predicted that Israel’s relations with the United States would not suffer.
