Pollard could be freed to salvage stalled talks

Ramallah: In recent days, a figure from a two-decade-old US-Israeli controversy has resurfaced, leading to speculation that he may be at the centre of a stalled Palestinian-Israeli prisoner release agreement.

He is Jonathan Pollard, the American naval intelligence analyst, serving a life sentence in the US after being found guilty in 1987 of passing secrets to the Israelis.

After the Israelis reneged on their pledge to release a fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to continue peace negotiations, US Secretary of State John Kerry rushed back to the Middle East on Monday to try to salvage stalled peace talks, possibly by releasing Pollard in exchange for the Palestinian prisoners.

A number of media sources have speculated that the US, after decades of refusing to entertain the idea, is now offering to release Pollard in an attempt to re-engage the Israelis.

A source close to the talks said on Tuesday that there was a proposal which could see Pollard freed before the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins mid-April.

“The emerging deal... contains the following elements: the release of Jonathan Pollard before the Passover holiday and the extension of the negotiations with the Palestinians into 2015,” the source said.

In exchange for Pollard’s release, the Israelis would honour their commitment to release 26 Palestinian prisoners — including some who are Israeli citizens — whose continued imprisonment is holding up talks.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who denied reports last week that Pollard might go free, said: “Jonathan Pollard was convicted of espionage and is serving his sentence. I do not have any update for you on his status.”

Pollard was convicted of espionage after he pleaded guilty to charges that he had passed US secrets to the Israeli regime while working as an intelligent analyst. His case was significant because he is the only US citizen to have been convicted of spying for an ally of the US who has been jailed for longer than a decade.

He will be eligible for parole on November 21, 2015,

Pollard is believed to have begun to pass information to an Israeli officer after the Israelis accepted the analyst’s offer to pass on information Pollard claimed the US was keeping from them.

He is believed to have received money in exchange for the information, but the Israeli regime denies this.

In 1995, the Israelis granted citizenship to Pollard, who was an American Jew.

A number of Israelis have lobbied for his release over the years and in 1992 Benjamin Netanyahu visited him in jail.

US intelligence agencies have however long opposed any early release of Pollard. There was no immediate Palestinian comment on the proposal.

While freeing Pollard about 18 months early could spur the Israelis to make concessions that would keep the peace talks alive, it also may cause an uproar among current and former US intelligence officials who consider him a traitor.

“We would express our real outrage that an unrepentant spy is being released for an abstract political point that really won’t make a difference,” Oliver “Buck” Revell, who served as associate deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation when Pollard was convicted, told Bloomberg.

— with inputs from agencies