Former American agent Jonathan Pollard, who spent 30 years in a US prison for spying for Israel, was given a hero’s welcome by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and handed an Israeli identity card as he landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning.
Pollard a former civilian intelligence analyst for the US navy, also kissed the ground after touching down.
The 66 year old was free to move to Israel after the US Justice Department allowed parole restrictions on him to expire last month, ending the decades-long saga which had been a blight on relations between the two firm allies.
He and his wife Esther flew to Tel Aviv on a private plane owned by a billionaire supporter of outgoing US president Donald Trump.
The convicted spy sold military secrets to Israel while working at the Pentagon in the 1980s. He was arrested in 1985 after trying unsuccessfully to gain asylum at the Israeli embassy in Washington and pleaded guilty.
The espionage affair embarrassed Israel, tarnished its relations with the US for years, and unsettled the Jewish American community.
Mr Netanyahu said last month that Israel is “waiting for [Pollard] with open arms” and took the extraordinary step on Wednesday of meeting the couple on the tarmac, where he presented the former spy with an Israeli identity card.
“The prime minister told the Pollards that it is good that they have come home where they will be able to start a new life, in freedom and happiness,” Mr Netanyahu’s office said.
Jonathan Pollard said: “We are ecstatic to be home at last after 35 years and we thank the people and the prime minister of Israel for bringing us home.”
Reuven Rivlin, the Israeli president, lauded the news and tweeted: “Welcome Jonathan Pollard” alongside an Israeli flag. The country’s interior minister, Aryeh Deri, also welcomed Pollard, calling him “our brother” and adding that he had been granted an Israeli passport.
Pollard was arrested by FBI agents in 1985 and sentenced to life imprisonment after pleading guilty to handing over thousands of classified documents while working as a US naval intelligence analyst.
He was granted Israeli citizenship by Israel in the1990s while still behind bars.
American defence and intelligence officials have consistently argued against freeing Pollard but he was released after thirty years in 2015 under tight parole restrictions that ended in November.
According to Israeli daily Haaretz, during his time as a spy for Israel he passed on classified documents related to the development of chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria, satellite photos from Tunisia (used by Israel in the 1985 bombing of Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters there), information on Arab armies, and more.
The step to not extend travel restrictions allowing Pollard to move to Israel followed previous diplomatic gifts given to Israel in the waning days of the Trump administration, whose policies have been closely aligned with Netanyahu’s positions.
It also followed a November visit to Israel by Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, who travelled to an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, despite it being deemed illegal under international law, and the occupied Golan Heights, the first such visits by a top US diplomat.
In recent months Mr Trump has brokered several normalisation deals between Israel and Arab countries including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, breaking decades of regional boycotts of Israel over the treatment of Palestinians.
Earlier in his four-year term in office, Mr Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby recognising the contested city as the capital of Israel.
Israeli newspapers gave front-page coverage to Pollard’s arrival in Israel with pro-Netanyahu daily Yisrael Hayom writing “Home at last” and “Overjoyed Israeli officials welcome Jonathan Pollard to Israel”.
Boaz Bismut, editor of the newspaper, which first broke the news, tweeted: “Welcome home Jonathan Pollard! I’m in this professions since 1983 and this is the most exciting professional night I’ve had.”
Some of Israel’s left-wing papers took opposing views, with Gideon Levy, a columnist in the liberal Haaretz daily, saying last month that Pollard is no national hero but “a spy who betrayed his country and caused damage to Israel and US Jews”.
