At the same time a suicide bomber killed 15 in an illegal gambling casino near Tel Aviv Tuesday, President George W. Bush reportedly agreed in talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to shove aside Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under the pretext of political reform of the Palestinian Authority.
Senior Israeli officials in Israel were unable to confirm the report, which the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said it learned from sources within Sharon’s entourage.
Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University, said it was known that Sharon wants to see reforms in the hope they would "give someone else day-to-day responsibilities, like a prime minister of Palestinian affairs, which would sideline Arafat: something which [Arafat] has shown no interest in cooperating with."
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