Israeli media have reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the White House that it is willing to continue a freeze on Jewish settlements — and save the talks from collapsing next week — if the Obama administration frees Jonathan Pollard.
Publicly, the Obama administration is ignoring the reported offer from Israel, but on Sunday the 10-month moratorium on construction in the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank is set to expire and the Palestinian negotiators are threatening to walk out of US-sponsored Middle East peace talks if the it is not extended.
Pressure to release Pollard, a civilian US Navy intelligence analyst serving a life sentence since 1987 for providing thousands of secret documents to Israel, arises regularly, encouraged by right-wing parties in Jerusalem and Pollard's wife (who met and married him while he was in prison).
But angry refusals from national security officials in Washington have repeatedly derailed the idea. During Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations at the Wye Plantation in 2001, CIA Director George Tenet famously threatened to resign when the Clinton White House entertained the idea of Pollard's release.
Pollard also sold secrets to South Africa and advertised his services to Pakistan, they point out, while Israel used some of the documents he gave them as barter for favors from Moscow.
The latest Pollard feeler first arose Monday on the Israeli Army radio station. Army radio said that Netanyahu had asked an unnamed intermediary to sound out the Obama administration on the proposal, but it is not known what response was received.
Other Israeli media reported that the prime minister dispatched the intermediary to approach the Americans “discreetly, and unofficially.”
Settler groups responded angrily to the suggestion of a three-month freeze in exchange for Pollard’s freedom, according to reports.
Jonathan Broder, senior editor for Defense and Foreign Policy at Congressional Quarterly Weekly, in his email to Jeff Stein of the Washington Post said that Netanyahu's alleged overture was more than just a gesture to his right-wing allies. Netanyahu "has tried this before, to link Israeli concessions in peace talks to a Pollard release," Broder said. "One can only assume he thinks this might mollify the right. But judging from the negative reaction of the settler groups, getting Pollard back is not worth a freeze to them."
