The Pollard Case - the Latest Obama-Kerry Foreign Policy Non-Strategy

John Kerry says multiple options are in play, even though a dispute threatens to derail his efforts to extend Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations beyond the 29th of April. He made the comments after cancelling a visit to the West Bank today. Earlier on Wednesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would seek further UN recognition unless a prisoner release by Israel went ahead. At a televised meeting in the West Bank, Mr Abbas signed applications by the "State of Palestine" to join 15 UN treaties and conventions. Leading members of his Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) voted unanimously in support of the move, which the Israeli and US governments have called a serious mistake. In its own likely response, Israel has reissued tenders for 708 homes in the Jewish settlement of Gilo in East Jerusalem. Speaking to reporters in Brussels shortly after the announcement by President Abbas, Kerry called on both sides to show restraint : "It is completely premature tonight to draw... any final judgment about today's events and where things are. This is a moment to be really clear-eyed and sober about this process," he said. Kerry's efforts to prolong the negotiations have been jeopardized by a disagreement over the release of a fourth group of 26 long-term Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. Abbas says they must be freed, under a promise Israel made before the negotiations resumed in July after a three-year break. But Israeli officials say they are reluctant to proceed unless the Palestinians make a prior commitment to extending the talks, and stress that the releases have always been tied to their progress. The previous three releases were very unpopular in Israel because many of the prisoners were convicted of murdering Israelis. ~~~~~ It is against this impasse that, according to Reuters, the New York Times and the AP, John Kerry has apparently offered a deal under which the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners would be freed in return for the release by the US of Jonathan Pollard, an American who was jailed for life in 1987 for spying for Israel. The White House confirmed that talks were "under way" over the convicted spy but said no decision had been made by President Obama. "Jonathan Pollard was convicted of espionage and he is serving his sentence," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday. "There are obviously a lot of things happening in that arena and I am not going to get ahead of discussions that are under way," Carney added. ~~~~~ Jonathan Pollard was born to a Jewish family in Texas, and grew up in Indiana with strong affection for the state of Israel. He loved hearing stories about Israel military heroes, according to Wolf Blitzer's book, "Territory of Lies." Blitzer was Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post newspaper in 1987, and interviewed Pollard in prison before he was sentenced. (US intelligence officials said the interview was unauthorized and broke the terms of Pollard's plea agreement.) Pollard developed a desire to emigrate to Israel, but he never made the move, staying in the US after attending Stanford University to do graduate work at Notre Dame, Indiana University and the Fletcher School at Tufts. Pollard tried to get a job with the CIA, but, according to declassified CIA documents, he was rejected after he admitted “extensive recent use of marijuana.” He ended up being hired as an analyst with the US Navy and focused on counter-terrorism, a job that gave him access to classified intelligence information. Pollard's colleagues apparently became suspicious when they noticed him requesting large amounts of classified material unrelated to his work. The US government said the pile of secret documents Pollard would ultimately sell to the Israelis could fill a small room. But after he was arrested, Israel claimed no knowledge of Pollard's espionage activities. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the American spy was part of a rogue operation. Israel vowed to cooperate fully with the investigation. But Pollard thought he was acting on behalf of officials at “the highest levels of the Israeli government." Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger wrote a classified 46-page memorandum to the judge who sentenced Pollard, describing him as a dangerous spy. To this day, American intelligence officers say that Pollard committed treason - even though he was selling secrets to a US ally - and that he exposed US intelligence sources and methods. Pollard was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995. ~~~~~ Jonathan Pollard's case used to be a cause of the political right-wing in Israel, but he has gradually attracted wider Israeli support - including current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited Pollard in prison in 2002. Many Israelis see Pollard as a Jewish American hero who stuck his neck out to help an American ally, pointing out that other Americans convicted of espionage have been released from prison after serving far less time. The former Israeli intelligence officer who was Pollard's handler when the American was selling classified documents to Israel, Rafael Eitan, said Pollard was not spying against the US - he was spying to assist Israel - Eitan told the BBC in a 2013 interview. But Eitan, who is still banned from travel to the US, said running a spy operation with an American citizen on US soil was, 'a political mistake.' “I apologized many times,...And I apologize now. I feel that the US is a model for all the world. If we don't have the US, there is a big risk and danger to the whole world.” ~~~~~ And that brings us back to John Kerry's idea to trade Pollard to Israel for its agreement to release 26 more Palestinian terrorist prisoners - a move that Kerry thinks might salvage the latest round of Israel-Palestine peace talks. General Michael Hayden, former director of both the CIA and the NSA, is against a plan to release Pollard : "One of the dangers when you get into negotiations with the Russians over Crimea and Ukraine, the Iranians over nuclear weapons, the Israelis and the Palestinians, you fear that your negotiators get so caught up in the negotiations that they'll do anything to keep the talks alive. That's what this seems to be," Hayden said. He did, however, point to possible humanitarian grounds for Pollard's release. "The man has spent a quarter-century in jail. He had a plea bargain between himself and the prosecutors that the judge threw out. He got a particularly harsh sentence. So if you've got a humanitarian question here, look at it in due time as a humanitarian question," he said. Asked whether the move to release Pollard now could also be political because it would help President Obama's standing with Israel, Hayden replied, "Many supporters of Israel would be very happy if Mr. Pollard were released, and so to that degree, certainly, the President would buy support among those who are solid supporters of the Jewish state, no question about it." Aaron David Miller, an expert who advised many Democrat and Republican administrations, says that the Obama administration is floating Pollard simply in an effort to keep Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the negotiating table - not in the hope of signing a long-term agreement : “Pollard will not buy the President or Kerry the space and time necessary to see this process to fruition unless something fundamentally changes the minds of Abbas and Netanyahu, and Pollard’s release is not going to do that,” Miller said. ~~~~~ Dear readers, Barack Obama and John Kerry have created a so-called foreign policy based on reacting to streaming events - whether turning Kerry's airplane back to Paris based on a phone call with Vladimir Putin or offering to free Jonathan Pollard as a peace offering to Israel after demanding it free Palestinian terrorists to appease Palestine and Abbas. These knee-jerk reactions follow one after another, with no explanation of strategy - because there is none, unless it is to survive until 20 January 2017 and hand off the mess Obama has made to a new American President who can spell 'strategy' and actually create and follow one. As for rhe Israel-Palestine negotiations, the only - the absolutely only - strategy that could have advanced the cause of peace between Israel and Palestine would have been for President Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to stand firm with Israel against the efforts of Abbas and Fatah and their allies to isolate Israel and America. It is now too late for that from Obama, and so - along with the world that is trying to resolve problems in Syria, North Korea, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - Israel will have to try to hold things together until Barack Obama exists stage left and a competent US President takes center stage.