Trump should move Pollard to Jerusalem

[Published 5 June 2017]


President Trump’s delay in moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem presents the President with a wonderful opportunity to commute Jonathan Pollard’s sentence - freeing Pollard to move from New York to Jerusalem.

Trump made his unequivocal Embassy pledge on 22 March 2016:

“We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.”

A White House statement on 1 June put this brave face on Trump ‘s decision delaying the Embassy move:

“While President Donald J. Trump signed the waiver under the Jerusalem Embassy Act and delayed moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, no one should consider this step to be in any way a retreat from the President’s strong support for Israel and for the United States-Israel alliance. President Trump made this decision to maximize the chances of successfully negotiating a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, fulfilling his solemn obligation to defend America’s national security interests. But, as he has repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy, the question is not if that move happens, but only when.”

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs have so far extended over a period of 23 years without any real success - so one can only wonder when the Embassy move is likely to occur.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response was quite philosophical:

“Though Israel is disappointed that the embassy will not move at this time, we appreciate today’s expression of President Trump’s friendship to Israel and his commitment to moving the embassy in the future,”

Trump’s friendship would be confirmed were he to commute Pollard’s life sentence and harsh parole conditions to enable Pollard’s move to Jerusalem,

Pollard - an intelligence analyst with the US Government - received his life sentence for passing classified information to an American ally - Israel. No other American has received such a crushing sentence.

Pollard - released in 2015 after serving 30 years penal servitude - was placed on harsh parole conditions requiring him to wear an electronic tracking device, obey a curfew and allow his computers to be monitored. He must remain in the United States until November 2020.

Pollard’s appeal to relax his parole conditions was recently rejected.

Pollard’s treatment can be contrasted to that meted out to Bradley (now known as Chelsea) Manning - who leaked more than 700,000 documents to WikiLeaks in 2010 whilst serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.

Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

President Obama commuted Manning’s sentence in January - three days before vacating the White House - from 35 years to just over 7 years, the majority of which Manning had already served. Trump said Manning should never have been released from prison.

Manning was freed from federal custody on May 17th.

Israeli Prime Ministers from Yitzchak Rabin to Netanyahu had unsuccessfully lobbied successive Republican and Democratic Presidents for Pollard’s release and permission to resettle in Israel.

Pollard is recently reported to have remarked:

“As much as Trump needs to be held to his promise to move the embassy, it is just as important that the prime minister keep his promise to bring an agent home”

President Obama’s precedent in freeing Manning whilst resisting similar overtures for Pollard’s release was reprehensible.

Commuting Pollard’s sentence at this particular moment in Trump’s presidency will help cement the blossoming post-Obama relationship between the United States and one of its staunchest allies - Israel.

Pollard’s move to Jerusalem as it celebrates the 50th anniversary of its liberation from 19 years of illegal occupation by Jordan would alleviate the disappointment of the Embassy not moving there.

That is what Trump-style dealmaking is all about.

Palestine - Don't Repeat The Syrian Fiasco

[Published 9 August 2012]


Australia’s Foreign Minister - Senator Bob Carr - has been visiting Israel and in the time honoured tradition of all such visiting dignitaries - has met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The usual motherhood statement that normally follows such meetings was issued:

“In discussions with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Senator Carr underscored the importance of reaching a negotiated two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and emphasised the urgent need for resumption of negotiations.”

Australia - like most countries around the world - has put its credibility, money and prestige on the line in wanting to see this outcome - even though 19 years of fruitless negotiations have failed to get the proposal to first base.

The key to such a solution is that it must be “negotiated” and for that to happen there is an “urgent need for resumption of negotiations”.

The problem is that Israel is ready to resume such negotiations without preconditions - but the Palestinian Authority will not resume those negotiations unless Israel imposes a building freeze in the West Bank for the duration of the resumed negotiations.

A 10 month moratorium imposed by Israel in November 2009 on new residential building in the West Bank proved to be a complete waste of time - as the Palestinian Authority only returned to the negotiating table one month prior to the moratorium’s expiry - and then tried to get an extension - which was rejected and has been refused ever since.

Australia and other like-minded nations must now actively and urgently engage in trying to break this impasse by getting Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table as soon as possible - if the two-state solution so earnestly desired is ever to be achieved.

There is no prospect of such a solution whilst Australia and many other countries of influence become more frustrated crossing their arms and furrowing their brows in making similar ineffectual statements.

At the same time these same countries are also wringing their hands at the murder and mayhem that has been going on before their very eyes in Syria for the last 18 months. Any action by them to halt the slaughter there - short of military intervention - is apparently beyond contemplation.

These countries can now only sit helplessly by and pray that there will be sufficient defections from the Assad regime to make his continuing grip on power untenable.

Iran, Russia and China - and the Alawite ruling minority - however have different ideas. The end of bloodbath is nowhere in sight.

Faced with this humanitarian tragedy in Syria - Australia and those other countries seeking the resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority need to seriously reflect on the responsibility they will ultimately have to bear should violence shatter the present relative calm and lead to a strong military response by Israel in the West Bank or Gaza.

They should give serious consideration to implementing some of the following measures to try and get Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table immediately:

1. America could offer to pardon Israeli-American spy Jonathan Pollard after being imprisoned for the last 27 years - in return for Israel agreeing to a limited moratorium on building in the West Bank.

Pollard has renounced his United States citizenship and is now an Israeli citizen. He would be deported to Israel if he were released from prison.

President Obama has been opposed to such a move - but the deteriorating situation in Syria and the continuing stalemate between Israel and the Palestinian Authority could be the catalysts for the President changing his mind - not to mention the boost that such a decision would give to his chances of re-election in November.

An offer to release Pollard would prove virtually impossible for Israel to refuse.

2. Australia and the European Union Member States could withhold any further funding to Israeli based non-government organisations financially assisting the 5% of the Palestinian Arabs who presently live in Area C - some 60% of the West Bank.

Much of this money has gone to fund illegal Arab building activity in Area C. Israel is acting through the Courts to end such illegal building and there is growing confrontation between the civil administration and the Arab residents,

Keeping the money flowing at least for humanitarian - if not building - purposes could be an incentive to the Palestinian Authority to return to the negotiating table.

3. Some EU member states have formed an interest group to advocate a change in Israeli policy in Area C including Germany, the UK, Belgium, Denmark, France, Sweden and the EU Commission. These countries could indicate they will not pursue their agenda whilst the Palestinian Authority remains absent from the negotiating table.

4. Withdrawing all diplomatic and financial support should the Palestinian Authority continue to pursue its quest to be recognized as a non-member observer state at the United Nations in September in breach of its agreement to not take such unilateral action.

5. Cutting funding to the Palestinian Authority for use in Areas A and B where the remaining 95% of the West Bank Arab population reside.

6. Those 87 countries that did not vote to admit Palestine as a member State of UNESCO could begin a diplomatic campaign to terminate Palestine’s membership of UNESCO by securing a resolution requiring UNESCO to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice as to the legality and constitutionality of the decision to admit Palestine as a member state of UNESCO.

Whether any of these suggestions will have the desired effect of convincing Israel and the Palestinian Authority to resume negotiations can only be determined once they have been put in motion.

The real question is - can the world afford to sit by and do nothing but utter platitudes such as those expressed by Australia’s Foreign Minister?

If that is all they continue to do - then the prospect of negotiations resuming again is bleak indeed.

The consequences and repercussions that could follow will bring home to the international community the folly of their inaction and the threat to human life their indecision helped incubate.

Another potential Syria with the world sitting by on the sidelines as the Israeli/Arab conflict spirals out of control - unable to do anything but call for a ceasefire that the international community is unable to enforce - is a horrible scenario.

It hopefully can be avoided - if the international community acts now

Palestine - Israel ReadiesTo Extend Its Sovereignty Into West Bank

[Published 28 June 2012]


A confluence of events is increasingly pointing to Israel taking action in the very near future to extend its sovereignty over a substantial part - if not all - of the 61% of the West Bank it has totally controlled since 1967 - unless Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ends his posturing and submits to considerable loss of face by announcing he is now prepared to resume negotiations with Israel without preconditions of any kind.

Abbas himself only last week declared the negotiating processes begun under the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the Bush Roadmap in 2003 to be “clinically dead” (whatever that means). If he is not prepared to at least try to breathe life into those stalled processes by unconditionally returning to the negotiating table - he will be presiding over the irreversible end of those negotiations. Israel is not going to continue to mark time waiting for Abbas to end his political filibuster.

Abbas’s attempts to procure international pressure to be brought to bear on Israel to freeze building activities in the West Bank as a condition of resuming such negotiations have failed. He has literally been left to hang out to dry.

His meeting with Russian President Putin - during Putin’s visit to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan this week - clearly indicated his desperation and frustration - as revealed in the following press release:

“We assured the president that the way to peace is through negotiations with Israel, and we continue to call for him to hold an international peace conference in Moscow, as we previously agreed. We asked our friends to help us to release our prisoners who were arrested prior to 1994, who it was agreed with Israel would be released, but have not yet been freed, If it (Israel) frees these prisoners, there could be a meeting with Mr Netanyahu for a session of dialogue but that doesn’t mean negotiations,”

Only one person - President Obama - can possibly resuscitate the negotiations by inducing Israel to impose a building freeze for a limited time in the West Bank or release more prisoners than the thousands it has already done so.

This would require Obama to grant a pardon to Jonathan Pollard who has been rotting away in American prisons for the last 26 years for spying for Israel. Since Israeli President - Shimon Peres - tried and failed to secure Pollard’s release in the past two weeks - Abbas would need a miracle for Obama to change his mind and save Abbas from the hole which he has dug for himself.

Another indicator of Israel’s readiness to end the logjam in the West Bank for the last 19 years came with Israel’s response to the suggestion this week by the United Nations Human Rights Council President - Laura Dupuy Lasserre - that a fact-finding mission on West Bank settlements might be despatched as early as July. This news was met with a curt response from Eviatar Manor, deputy director-general for international organizations at Israel’s Foreign Ministry - who stated:

“It is important for us to remind everyone that we are not going to cooperate with this fact-finding mission. They will not be allowed to enter the country or go to the West Bank,”

Any decision to extend Israeli sovereignty into the West Bank will not be harmed by the finalisation of a Report this week by The Committee to Examine the State of Construction in the West Bank.

Chaired by Retired Supreme Court Justice Edmund Levy and including District Court Judge Techiya Shapira and former Ambassador and Foreign Ministry Legal Advisor Allan Baker - this Committee has reportedly found that the West Bank is not under occupation rule,

The Committee is reported to have :

“analyzed the historic and legal background of Judea and Samaria and concludes that the belligerent occupation approach must be discarded as reflecting Israel’s status in those areas. According to the committee’s approach, Judea and Samaria were in a judicial vacuum before the Six Day War. The reason was that the Kingdom of Jordan, which held those territories, did so against the rule of international law, and its sovereignty over them was recognized solely by Great Britain. Since Jordan was not the legal sovereign, the report argues, the territories cannot be defined as occupied in the legal sense of the word.

In addition, the committee offers a string of arguments showing that Israel itself has a legal connection to those territories, which is another reason why it is not an occupier.”

The Report will be a smack in the eye to the international community and many Non Governmental Organizations in Israel which have long held the view that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal in international law. It will however bolster the resolve of one of the strongest National Unity Government’s in Israel’s history to act to end this game of diplomatic ping pong that has raged over the West Bank for the last 45 years by confirming the right of the Jewish people to live in and reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its biblical and ancient homeland as promulgated in the Mandate for Palestine and the United Nations Charter - and acknowledged in Security Council Resolution 242.

Add to this mix the deteriorating political situation and civil unrest in Israel’s immediate neighbours -Syria, Egypt and Jordan - then the strategic position of the West Bank takes on an increasing significance for Israel’s security and national interests ensuring that the generous offers made by Israel to the Palestinian Authority in 2000 and 2008 to cede Israel’s claim to sovereignty in more than 90% of the West Bank are not going to be repeated.

The inability of the international community to do anything to end the slaughter in Syria that has so far reportedly claimed 16000 lives in the last 15 months indicates that any protests at Israel extending its sovereignty into a large part of the West Bank where very few Arabs presently live - would be rhetoric at best and nothing more.

The racist demand - still repeated mantra fashion by the Palestinian Authority and its spokesmen - that 350000 Jews living in the West Bank be dispossessed and removed from their homes - supported by the silence of - and in some cases the active support of - a majority of a morally corrupt international community - could never and can never be acceded to by Israel.

The decision by UNESCO last October to recognize and admit Palestine as its 195th member State effectively ended the claim that the Palestinian Arabs are homeless and stateless. Whilst this decision was both illegal and unconstitutional - the failure by anyone in the international community to urge UNESCO to have its decision confirmed by the International Court of Justice amounts to de facto acceptance by all member states of the UNESCO decision.

Putting all these ingredients together - the issue of resolving sovereignty in a substantial part of the West Bank could be set to undergo a dramatic change in a very short time.

Palestine - Peace, Petulance, Posturing And Pollard

[Published 25 October 2011]


Two significant - yet seemingly unrelated - events have occurred during the past week within the ongoing Jewish-Arab conflict:

1. Israel’s release of 1027 terrorists for one of its soldiers - Gilad Shalit - with 80% of Israelis reportedly supporting the deal.
2. The PLO’s continuing refusal to resume negotiations with Israel until Israel ceases all building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - despite strenuous efforts by the Quartet to get PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating table.

The confluence of these two events however now presents an opportunity for the Quartet to get Israel and the PLO talking to each other again.

The Quartet represents probably the strongest diplomatic negotiating team ever assembled in history. Yet it has been made to look impotent in its inability to get the conflicting parties to sit across a table to try and peacefully resolve their differences.

Comprised of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - the Quartet is obviously concerned at the fallout that can occur should Abbas continue to unilaterally forge ahead with his request for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood in breach of UN Security Council Resolution 242, the Oslo Accords and the Bush Road Map.

Yet the Quartet has within its grasp a powerful negotiating card - the ability to pressure America to release and repatriate to Israel the convicted civilian American Naval Intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard in return for:

1. Israel implementing a total building freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem for an agreed specified time period and
2. The PLO immediately resuming direct negotiations with Israel

Pollard was sentenced to life imprisonment almost 27 years ago for disclosing vital security information to Israel - which Israel was legally entitled to receive anyway according to a 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries.

The information withheld from Israel included Syrian,Iraqi,Libyan and Iranian nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare capabilities - being developed for use against Israel. It also included information on ballistic missile development by these countries and information on planned terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian targets.

Pollard never had a trial. At the request of both the U.S. and Israeli governments, he entered into a plea agreement fully so-operating with the prosecution, which spared both governments a long, difficult, expensive and potentially embarrassing trial.

Yet he received a life sentence and a recommendation that he never be paroled -in complete violation of the plea agreement he had reached with the government - which promised a far less severe sentence.

Pollard was indicted on only one charge - passing classified information to an ally without intent to harm the United States.

No one else in the history of the United States has ever received a life sentence for passing classified information to an ally - only Pollard. The median sentence for this offence is two to four years. Even agents who have committed far more serious offences on behalf of hostile nations have not received such a harsh sentence.

In November 1995, Israel granted Pollard Israeli citizenship.

On May 12, 1998, the Government of Israel publicly acknowledged Pollard as an Israeli agent and indicated its commitment to securing his release and repatriation to Israel.

It was the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who, in 1995, first began openly to negotiate for Pollard’s release as part of the peace process.

President Clinton promised Prime Minister Rabin that he would release Pollard as part of a Middle East peace settlement, but the President refused to honor his promise after Rabin was assassinated.

The opportunity presented itself when Israel’s current Prime Minister - Benjamin Netanyahu - went to the Wye River Plantation talks in 1998 with Yasser Arafat - thinking that he would return to Israel with Jonathan Pollard in return for the concessions Israel made at those talks. President Clinton strenuously denied there was any such agreement.

Pollard is now in poor health. Surely he has paid a high enough price for his transgressions. The circumstances leading to his life sentence following the intervention of Secretary of Defence - Caspar Weinberger - remain unexplained.

If the Quartet wants to see Israel and the PLO resume direct negotiations then a decision to release Pollard as part of a deal to bring this about would undoubtedly be received in Israel with the same overwhelming support that greeted the news of Shalit’s release.

A similar proposal was floated by Israel twelve months ago but fell on deaf American ears. The political situation has deteriorated since then and the future appears bleak for both Arabs and Jews - indeed for world security - if negotiations are not resumed..

On the 20th February this year Gilad Shalit’s father made the following plea to President Obama on the occasion of Gilad’s 1,700th day in Hamas captivity in Gaza:

“[Pollard] has served his sentence, and the time has come to free him.”

One week previously a letter from 19 former Soviet Prisoners of Zion was sent to President Obama asking him to grant Pollard clemency - which stated:

“Your silence worries us We, former Prisoners of Zion in Soviet Russia, know the danger of silence. We know the terrible suffering that comes with each passing day in prison. Therefore, we appeal to you with a heartfelt cry - end this Jewish prisoner’s prolonged and terrible ordeal! You are the only one who can do so. Please, Mr. President, free Pollard now!”

Prominent Americans who have recently called for Pollard’s release include former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle, former CIA Director James Woolsey and former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz.

However any such decision will be difficult for President Obama to make following Vice President Joe Biden’s recently reported remarks:

“President Obama was considering clemency, but I told him, ‘Over my dead body are we going to let him out before his time. If it were up to me, he would stay in jail for life.”

Well it is not up to Vice President Biden - it is a decision which only President Obama can make.

The decision to release Pollard in the interests of pursuing peace stands in stark distinction to Netanyahu’s extremely difficult decision to release 1027 terrorists - a decision which almost certainly will cause a further threat to peace - judging by the reported comments of some of those released.

Pursuing peace - not perpetuating petulance or political posturing - should be President Obama’s catch cry at this very critical point of time.