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Source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/337915.html
Israel Weighs Deporting Arafat
(Ha'aretz) Aluf Benn - Following talks held by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bureau chief, Dov Weisglass, at the White House last Thursday, officials in the Prime Minister's Office believe there has been a significant turnaround in the U.S. position on the matter of Arafat's deportation. Weisglass did not explicitly ask for U.S. consent for the deportation, but the matter did come up for serious discussion, and the Americans did not reject the idea outright as they have in the past. The U.S. has insisted that the White House be consulted before any decision to harm or deport Arafat. When the Americans went to war in Iraq, they explained that the ousting of Saddam Hussein would be a blow to the extremists throughout the region and would make it easier to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. No one took the opposite view - that American entanglement in Iraq would cause a collapse of the peace process due to U.S. attention being diverted, and with elections just around the corner.