Washington watch: The blame game

By Douglas Bloomfield for Jpost.com

The prisoners, Palestinian and Pollard, are really a sideshow and have nothing to do with the core issues.

What happens when you combine Let’s Make A Deal and The Price Is Right? You get the Israeli- Palestinian Blame Game masquerading as a peace process. The host of the show is the indefatigable John Kerry, and the contestants are Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, who wish he’d leave them alone and go back to Rome or Crimea or Vienna or Brussels or wherever it is that people really want his help.

The crisis du jour is Israel’s reluctance to release 26 prisoners unless it gets something tangible in return, namely Palestinian agreement to keep the peace talks going into 2015. Abbas won’t commit himself until the 26 are freed and Netanyahu sweetens the deal. The latest group of prisoners slated for release includes Israeli Arabs, which has generated intense opposition across Israel.

The Netanyahu government also complained that the Palestinians have failed to engage in serious and good faith negotiations. Netanyahu’s former national security advisor, Yaakov Amidror, claims that over two decades of negotiations the Palestinians “did not budge an inch. In certain areas, they even moved backwards.”

The Palestinians respond with a similar charge, charging that Netanyahu has retreated from terms offered by two of his predecessors; the prime minister insists that doesn’t count since the Palestinians rejected those offers and Netanyahu opposed them at the time.

Back at the souk, Netanyahu is offering several hundred low-level criminals, but no murderers, and a partial settlement freeze, but he says he wants “something in return.”

It looks like he’ll get that, in the person of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. President Barack Obama is reportedly ready to free Pollard as an incentive for Netanyahu.

That certainly won’t sway Pollard’s supporters, who are largely opposed to Palestinian statehood.

Their hero’s freedom would not change a single vote.

Continue reading.