ttp://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/10/its-time-to-release-jonathan-pollard.html
I ALMOST ALWAYS AGREE WITH DAVID SINGER….BUT USING POLLARD TO GET THE ISRAEL/ARAB TALKS GOING AGAIN IS THE MOST GRIEVOUS USE OF A “PRISONER EXCHANGE”…. I AM APPALLED BY SINGER’S SUGGESTIONS
The Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer has chosen an alliterative title for his latest article: “Palestine – Peace, Petulance, Posturing, and Pollard”.
It comes as usual via the antipodean J-Wire service.
Writes David Singer:
‘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
* Israel implementing a total building freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem for an agreed specified time period and
* The PLO immediately resuming direct negotiations with Israel