Efforts to Bring Pollard Home Intensify

The peremptory Palestinian decision to seek unilateral recognition through U.N. conventions led Israel to cancel the last round of prisoner releases, and as a result, a proposal to release Pollard as a conciliatory gesture to the Israelis was left unresolved.

Efforts to bring about Pollard’s release will only intensify, as the sources were encouraged by the first public indication that the U.S. would allow him his freedom in the coming days, if it will help advance the peace process. They are hopeful that despite the problems, both the Palestinians and Israelis have too much at stake to let the negotiations end at this juncture.

The sources said they were also satisfied that an Israeli Cabinet majority for an agreement that could bring Pollard home existed despite opposition from Jewish Home MKs.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Pollard would refuse an opportunity to walk out of prison as part of an agreement in which Palestinian and Israeli prisoners are also released.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter became the most senior  former American official to date to endorse the release of Jonathan Pollard.

Carter said he supported the proposal to release Pollard as part of an agreement that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has been trying to arrange between Israel and the Palestinians.

“If the Israelis would agree to accept John Kerry’s proposal, if Pollard was released, I would say yes [to supporting freedom for Pollard],” the former president told Politico. “But I would make it an absolute swap and a certain thing, not just as a factor.”

Carter joined a growing list of top current and former American dignitaries calling for Pollard’s release that includes former secretaries of state George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, three former heads of the Central Intelligence Agency, former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, and former U.S. deputy defense secretary Lawrence Korb.

Also on Sunday, a group of more than 20 family members of victims of terrorists released in the current negotiations sent President Obama a letter over the weekend urging him to commute Pollard’s life sentence.  “If all the other considerations and appeals are not enough, please release Pollard as a gesture to the families who lost their dearest ones and had to watch the murderers of their loves ones go free,” they wrote. “Ending Pollard’s tragedy would give us a bit of consolation.”

The terror victims’ families joined a call for Pollard’s release written last week by kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.
“These days I cannot help but feel the great pain of Jonathan Pollard, jailed some 29 years — five times longer than my period of captivity, and this is the United States, our great friend,” Shalit wrote.

“The last time the state of Israel released 80 prisoners with blood on their hands as a gesture to [Abbas] it was at the request of the United States. Today, according to media reports, the U.S. once again calls for Israel to continue releasing more terrorists within the framework of the fourth round of prisoner
releases.

Please — all of you — join me in a clear call to our friends the Americans: We released dozens of terrorists with blood on their hands at your request — so extend to us this one gesture that can likely save [Pollard’s] life.”

Other top former American officials called this week for Pollard to be released without regard to the state of talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Former CIA chief Michael Hayden said he opposed a political agreement in which hundreds of Palestinian prisoners would be released, but that Pollard should instead be released on humanitarian grounds.

“The man has spent a quarter-century in jail,” Hayden told Newsmax. “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.”

U.S. Navy R.-Adm. (ret.) Norman Hayes said the time had come to release Pollard regardless of whether there will be an agreement.

“This is not how the game is played,” he said.

“His release should not have ties with the release of Palestinian prisoners by the Israelis.”

This article appeared in print on page 1 of the April 7th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.