Is it connected to the classified-information case against two former AIPAC staffers? Is it a bid to pressure Israel to concede more to the Palestinians ahead of a new round of peace talks? Is it connected to the murky circumstances of Israel’s mysterious air strike in Syria last September?

For now, the main question surrounding the case of Ben-Ami Kadish, the octogenarian New Jersey man arrested last week for allegedly sharing classified information with Israel decades ago is: why now?

The four charges of conspiracy against Kadish are serious. He is accused of having shared with his Israeli handler U.S. nuclear secrets, plans for combat aircraft improvements and missile defense information.

From 1979 to 1985, Kadish allegedly “borrowed” 30 to 100 documents from the library of the U.S. Army facility in Dover, N.J., where he was employed and shared them with the science affairs consul at the Israeli consulate in New York, who has not been charged.

Kadish, a Connecticut native who grew up in pre-state Palestine, served in the Haganah, Israel’s pre-state defence force. He also served in the U.S. military during World War II.

He allegedly told FBI agents that he shared the documents to help Israel. He was not paid by Israel for his services.

Some observers noted that the charges against him should be way past their due date: the statute of limitations on the charges is 10 years, unless they incur the death penalty. Prosecutors have yet to say whether or not they intend to pursue the death penalty against Kadish, who has not been indicted.

Some Jewish community leaders are asking whether his arrest is part of an attempt by federal agents to influence the outcome of the classified-information case against two former senior staffers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.

Rosen and Weissman were indicted nearly three years ago for allegedly sharing classified information on Iran and terrorism with journalists, colleagues and Israeli diplomats. But the case against the pair has yet to come to trial, in large part because the judge has limited its scope to proving the defendants harmed U.S. interests with their alleged actions.

Assisting Israel in and of itself is not a crime, the judge said. He is also allowing defendants to call senior Bush administration officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to testify. Those obstacles have led the government to file a rare pre-trial appeal with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.

One Jewish communal leader who requested anonymity told JTA the Kadish arrest is an attempt “to taint the objectivity of jurors ahead of the trial” by creating an impression that spying for Israel has been pervasive.

Other U.S. Jewish leaders speculated whether the motive for the Kadish arrest was political, to give President George W. Bush more leverage in pressing Israel in peace talks. Bush will be travelling to the Middle East this month for Israel’s 60th anniversary, and Israel has yet to agree to attend a summit in the Egyptian coastal city Sharm el-Sheik in the third week of May.

Bush’s lame-duck status has hobbled his effectiveness, and he is eager for progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that he helped relaunch last fall in Annapolis, Md.

“It’s not easy trying to conduct policy in Washington when you know that there is a powerful pro-Israel constituency out there that says otherwise,” said Lenny ben-David, a former Israeli diplomat and a former AIPAC staffer. “One re-occurring tactic is to try to whittle support for Israel. So we get the occasional story of a spy, of weaponry sales to China, and it serves to whittle away the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Another theory suggests that Israel might have leaked the information implicating Kadish in a bid to head off congressional inquiries into its Sept. 6, 2007 air strike on Syria.

According to this theory, espoused last week in the American Conservative by former CIA agent Philip Giraldi, conservative Republicans in Congress and in the Bush administration want to use information implicating Syria and North Korea in nuclear weapons co-operation to tamp down outreach to both countries.

Anonymous sources in the U.S. State Department told the New York Times last week that this was why the administration decided to release video evidence last Thursday of North Koreans working at the Syrian site just before it was destroyed by Israel’s air strike.

Giraldi suggested that Israeli doves who support Israel-Syria talks leaked the information on Kadish to create a distraction and scuttle efforts to further isolate the Assad regime.

“The leak of the information at the present time is believed to be linked to proposed closed congressional hearings at the end of [April] in which the White House had planned to use several Israeli intelligence officers to provide evidence on the alleged Syrian nuclear program that was bombed on September 6, 2007,” he wrote. “It is now unlikely that Israeli intelligence officers will allow themselves to be questioned because they would almost certainly be asked about Israeli spying on the U.S.”

As for Kadish, if the complaint sheet filed by FBI agents is true, he may have set his own trap by accepting a phone call on March 20 from his alleged former Israeli handler, Yosef Yagur.

According to the complaint, Yagur called just hours after Kadish apparently had been truthful with investigators in a first interview, and he urged Kadish to lie in subsequent interviews. The call was recorded.

Kadish allegedly lied in the March 21 interview, saying he had not spoken with Yagur – extending a conspiracy that otherwise ostensibly had ended in November 1985 to the March 20 phone call.