Moscow, Tel Aviv exchange favors as Netanyahu shops for support on US plan

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a fleeting visit to Moscow en route from Washington, where he had taken part in US President Donald Trump’s presentation of his “deal of the century.”

Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin met last week in Jerusalem and the meeting in Moscow is their fifth over the last 12 months. Netanyahu also came to take home US-Israeli national Naama Issachar, who was sentenced to seven and a half years in Russian prison for drug smuggling and drug possession in October. Public opinion in Israel considered the sentence disproportionately harsh, as the offense had not involved any border crossing. Issachar was arrested in the transit zone of the airport on the way from Delhi to Tel Aviv.

In Israel, Issachar was called a “political hostage” to be released in exchange for Alexei Burkov, a Russian hacker arrested in Tel Aviv in 2015, for whom the United States had filed an extradition request. However, Burkov had already been extradited to Washington and the Issachar case threatened to disrupt Putin’s visit to Israel scheduled for late January. But it was reported in the run-up to the trip that the woman might be pardoned. Meanwhile, the Israeli media took note of the developments in the deadlocked ownership case concerning Alexander Courtyard in Jerusalem’s Old City. Russia has sought control of the Russian Orthodox site since 2015. Some came to believe that the decision to hand over the property was made in return for the release of Issachar. In Jerusalem, Putin publicly promised the Israeli prime minister that “everything will be OK” with her. The decree to pardon and free the Israeli woman was signed on Wednesday night, on the eve of Netanyahu’s flight to Moscow.

A source close to the Israeli prime minister said the pardon was not part of any kind of deal with the Russian government, explaining, “The pardon is Putin’s way of paying tribute to Netanyahu.”