By now most people might have heard about an Israeli request for the release of Jonathan Pollard. Here we present the actual substance behind what’s really going on.
President Obama and Secretary Kerry have been trying for months to establish their own legacy position by leveraging a peace agreement between Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Specifically because Kerry/Obama are less pro-Israel than any other administration – Abbas (Palestinian Authority) has felt empowered, and doubled down on his position that Netanyahu (Israel) must make *ALL* the substantive concessions for peace.
To that end the three basic Israeli requests called, “core peace issues” for negotiation baseline have been rebuked by Abbas. He communicated this to President Obama during his visit in March.
The three “core” requests by Israel are:
ONE – Recognize Israel as a Jewish state and their right to exist.
TWO – Abandon the Palestinian demand for an automatic “right of return” for millions of Palestinians and their descendants. A demand that, if implemented, would drastically alter Israel’s demographic balance and which no conceivable Israeli government would accept.
THREE – Commit to an “end of conflict”. Meaning at the end of the peace deal, if reached, the Palestinians would terminate any further demands – Meaning it would be over, done, finished and no further conflict would exist.
Abbas told both President Obama and Secretary Kerry: “No-Way” – never going to happen. EVER. PERIOD.
The following week Abbas told the Arab league “Recognition of a Jewish state is a condition that we absolutely refuse to discuss,” – Abbas at the Arab League summit in Kuwait. Period. Never going to happen. Ever.
Subsequently this GRAND PONTIFICATION of Obama/Kerry toward their own legacy is totally kaput. Their collective efforts are beyond futile; but they have invested so much of their credibility in global and highly public proclamations they could, indeed would, deliver a peace deal.
Obama and Kerry want to save their own face.
Absent of negotiations toward peace, and recognizing he wants to get something of benefit from the desire of Kerry/Obama to avoid embarrassment, Abbas has requested any further discussions (not negotiations, just “discussions”) be contingent upon Palestinian prisoners (mostly terrorists) being released.
SHIT ! For Obama/Kerry that sucks because Israel has no intention or inclination to release prisoners just to face them again as they will be used as both propaganda and reinforcements toward more terror campaigns.
But Obama/Kerry are so filled with ego – to avoid embarrassment they are demanding Israel consider a prisoner release to give the appearance of ongoing negotiations.
Fat chance.
However, Israel knowing the avoidance of embarrassment is driving the decision, and knowing the shear magnitude of the Obama administration ego, they throw out a crazy POSSIBILITY/request:
“OK, if it’s that important to you to avoid global embarrassment then release Jonathan Pollard and we’ll discuss letting some Palestinian terrorists go from our prison” !
That’s all this Jonathan Pollard story is.
The request for his release has NOTHING to do with peace. The request has nothing to do with negotiations toward peace. The request is simply Israel leveraging the ego of Obama/Kerry to get something they have requested for years.
