Kerry ‘deceived’ Israel over prisoner releases, TV report claims
US Secretary of State John Kerry “deceived” Israel during the discussions over the release of longtime Palestinian terrorist convicts, a senior Israeli official charged Monday, according to a TV report.
The dramatic Channel 2 report — broadcast just a few hours before Israel’s release of a third group of 26 Palestinian prisoners, and shortly before Kerry is due back in the region with hopes to get Israel and the Palestinians to sign a “framework” peace deal — suggested a profound breakdown of trust between the secretary and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Prime Minister’s Office late Monday issued a statement saying it was not accusing Kerry of deception.
The TV report said that Netanyahu had sent a message to Kerry in the last few days making crystal clear that Israel will not free any Israeli Arab prisoners in the fourth and final phase of the prisoner releases, set for the coming months, and it suggested that Kerry had duplicitously allowed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to believe that Israeli Arab prisoners would be freed.
According to the report, quoting an unnamed senior Israeli government source, Netanyahu had agreed with Kerry, when they were finalizing terms for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the summer, that Israel would free 82 Palestinian prisoners in a series of phased releases, and that Israel would not include any Israeli Arab convicts among those to be freed. And yet when Abbas demanded, in his own separate meetings with Kerry, that 104 prisoners be released, and that Israeli Arab terrorist convicts be among those set free, “Kerry did not correct him,” the report said, presumably because he did not want to scupper the talks.
Instead, having chosen not to resolve the discrepancy with Abbas, the secretary of state came back to Netanyahu, and apparently attempted to persuade the prime minister to change his position. According to the TV report, that was when the issue of a possible release of spy-for-Israel Jonathan Pollard entered the equation. Netanyahu reiterated to Kerry that he was not prepared to release Israeli Arab prisoners as any kind of a goodwill gesture to Abbas, but said he might consider doing so as a gesture to the United States, were Washington to free Pollard. The secretary then promised to look into the possibility.
In the last few days, the report continued, Netanyahu had made clear to Kerry that Israel’s refusal to release Israeli Arab terror convicts is unchanged. The prime minister has also instructed the Shin Bet security service and the Israel Prison Service to draw up a list of 26 names for the fourth and final scheduled batch of prisoner releases, set to take place in the coming months, that does not include any Israeli Arabs. TRUNews