[The Great Satan]

I think we are tight with the Israelis behind the scenes. We have a common enemy: "Saddama bin Palifat," the all-purpose mass-murdering terrorist-tyrant Arabian islamo whackjob.

[Mitchell]

I hope so. It makes military sense for us to coordinate our actions with the Israelis, and it's also the right thing to do.

The U.S. and Israel may be playing a good cop/bad cop routine. Israel goes in with force, and we've made them promise not to harm Arafat. But we're actually in it together, having agreed on the course of action.

There was talk a week or two ago that the U.S. was looking to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to simplify things before going to war with Iraq. This was generally interpreted as more useless peace process talk. Maybe this sort of Israeli military action is what was really meant.

[Mitchell]

I see now that Powell says that Israel has promised not to harm or capture Arafat. The agreement not to capture him is news to me. That doesn't leave many possibilities open: exile or house arrest (or he could conceivably be held hostage, as you say). In any case, Israel could say that it didn't capture him.

Arafat might also be killed in combat. It would be hard for Israel to guarantee that that won't happen, although my guess is that Pres. Bush would not be pleased if that happened so soon after we've given our assurances that Arafat won't be harmed.