Needless to say that we get nothing in return from the ‘Palestinians’….
Olmert suggests Palestinian prisoner release
By Ari Rabinovitch Sun Dec 24, 2:54 PM ET
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suggested on Sunday he could release some Palestinian prisoners this week, even though Gaza militants have yet to free a captured Israeli soldier.
Israel has been under U.S. and European pressure to take steps to bolster moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a power struggle with the Islamic militant group Hamas, which ousted Abbas’s Fatah faction in a parliamentary poll last year.
At their first formal meeting on Saturday, Olmert pledged to release $100 million in withheld tax revenues to Abbas, bypassing the Hamas-led government.
Olmert is under investigation for various crimes, such as illegally receiving money from abroad by selling houses at a high price, above market value, and buying them back at below market value. That was a cute way of evading Israeli law. He is also under investigation for helping a friend, the Australian Frank Lowy, buy Bank Leumi, Israel’s second largest bank [I believe] at below market value from the state, which had become the main owner of the bank back in the 1980s, as I recall. Olmert played this trick –to help a friend– when he was acting minister of the Treasury starting in mid-2005 after Netanyahu resigned from the Cabinet.
We’ve never had a more corrupt government.
As for Rafi Eitan, he’s the one who betrayed Pollard, according to various accounts.