Jonathan Pollard was released from prison after 30 years on Friday, but the drama isn’t over for the convicted Israeli spy.
The 61-year-old former intelligence officer walked free from a federal prison in Butner, N.C., but he will be forced to remain in the United States for an additional five years — against his own wishes as well as those of prominent Democrats and the Israeli government.
{mosads}Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly lobbying the Obama administration to ease up the terms of Pollard’s parole and let him move to Israel immediately.
Yet the White House is refusing to step in, ensuring that the ex-spy’s status remains in flux and continues to be a point of tension between the U.S. and Israel.
“The president has no intention of altering the terms of his parole,” a senior administration official reiterated on Thursday.
“He’s made clear that he wants there to be fair treatment under the law, as there should be with any individual,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters earlier in the month, before Netanyahu came to Washington.
The issue would likely have come up in the bilateral meeting between Obama and Netanyahu, Rhodes acknowledged.
“[Obama] respects how important this issue is to many Israelis,” Rhodes said.
Pollard, a former intelligence analyst for the Navy, was arrested in 1985 and convicted in 1987 of passing top-secret American documents to Israel. He is the only American ever to have been given a life sentence for spying on behalf of a U.S. ally.
His decades of imprisonment since then have been a constant source of friction for the U.S. and Israel, which has repeatedly indicated that it wants Washington to set Pollard free.
Last year, there was a stutter step in Pollard’s case, when his freedom was considered as a possible bargaining chip as part of an effort to spark Middle East peace talks. Those discussions ultimately fell flat.
Pollard has now been freed following a decision by the U.S. Parole Commission in July. Some analysts have speculated that his release is part of an effort to bridge the divide that emerged between the U.S. and Israel following the Obama administration’s negotiation of a nuclear deal with Iran, though the White House has rejected that notion.
Pollard became an Israeli citizen in 1995, and he has expressed a desire to return to that country, where some treat him like a national hero.
Netanyahu has reportedly warned Israeli officials not to appear too jubilant about Pollard’s freedom, on the eve of Friday’s release.
“We were asked not to speak expansively,” Education Minister Naftali Bennett told Israel’s Army Radio this week, according to reports.
“Pollard was an emissary of the state of Israel, for good and bad,” added Bennett, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff and a leader of Israel’s conservative bloc. “He did not do it for himself but for the people of Israel. And we are happy he will finally be released.”
Under the terms of his parole, Pollard will not be able to travel outside the country or take a job that regularly takes him more than 50 miles outside the location where he is released unless he first obtains prior approval from the Justice Department.
Those restrictions would last for five years, unless his parole is terminated early.
His wife lives in Israel, however, and he has expressed a desire to leave the country and go join her. In order to do so, he has promised to renounce his American citizenship and never return to the U.S.
In addition to the support from Israel, pressure for Obama to let Pollard leave is coming from within the president’s own party.
In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch last week, Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) insisted that Pollard wants to “move to Israel with his family so he can resume his life there.
“We believe that America’s interests and the interests of justice would be served if DOJ [Department of Justice] were to grant Jonathan Pollard’s request to reunite with his wife and move to Israel upon his release,” they wrote. “In its discussions of Mr. Pollard mandatory parole, DOJ has already acknowledged that there is no reasonable probability that he will commit any future crimes after his release.”
“I just think, let’s put the whole sordid, sorry thing behind us and let him go to Israel,” Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Hill this week.
“Otherwise he’ll be here, he doesn’t want to be here, it’ll be five years,” Engel added. “He’ll try to be a martyr. There are some people who will make him a martyr and I don’t think we need to have that whole dog and pony show. I really don’t.”