Palestinian Authority

The Palestinian Authority is the principal Palestinian political counterpart to the Israeli peace initiative that briefly gathers momentum near the end of the novel. It appears less as a fully described institution than as a powerful, partly concealed presence in negotiations involving Zehava Lerner, Sharon, and Palestinian leaders. Through that limited but consequential presence, the novel tests whether political trust, territorial compromise, and public peace can survive the weight of occupation, terrorism, competing historical narratives, and concealed responsibility.

Political Counterpart and Promise of Peace

The Palestinian Authority enters the plot as an organization whose senior figures possess enough authority to make a settlement conceivable. Charlie explains that Zehava has a personal relationship with several Palestinian Authority leaders, including Arafat, and suggests that Sharon may be bringing her into the government coalition to negotiate with Palestinians. Zehava is presented as unusually credible because both Israeli and Palestinian sides appear willing to trust her, making her political role larger than an ordinary ministerial appointment.

Zehava later tells Judah that she is negotiating with the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority and describes the opportunity as a possible coalition for a permanent settlement. Her argument is explicitly political: a single mistake could allow religious right-wing opponents of territorial concessions to destroy the coalition and remove her from government. The Palestinian Authority therefore becomes part of a delicate architecture in which credibility is not merely personal reputation but a practical condition of diplomacy. Zehava uses the prospect of peace to ask Judah not to publish the truth about Chaim Lerner’s death, claiming that exposing her role could kill the negotiations.

Negotiations in London

The organization’s most concrete appearance comes through the secret Israeli-Palestinian meetings in London. Zehava and her team hold one round of confidential discussions with Palestinian negotiators, while Charlie arranges for Judah to observe on the condition that he postpone reporting until a final agreement is reached and then avoid direct quotations. Charlie remains in Israel because he must respond if a new wave of terrorism begins, leaving the negotiations to proceed without him.

The talks initially appear promising. The territorial proposals are not infinitely distant: Israel offers roughly 95 percent of the West Bank, while the Palestinian side demands the whole territory with limited border adjustments intended to accommodate most Jewish settlers. Judah is not permitted to study the maps, but he sees enough to notice that Pisgat David falls on the Palestinian side in both versions. The settlement’s placement turns an abstract territorial exchange into a direct challenge to the permanence of Israeli settlement and to the political geography that has shaped the novel.

Territory, however, proves to be only the beginning. The negotiations deteriorate over the division of Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, the connection between Gaza and the West Bank, and the role of Hamas. What begins with warmth and hope collapses into bitter arguments a week after the London meetings. Judah suspects that the entire conference may have functioned partly as political theater, allowing both sides to claim a willingness to sacrifice while assigning inevitable failure to the other side.

Violence, Security, and Historical Claims

The Palestinian Authority is situated within a landscape where political representation and violence continually overlap. Kamal’s account of his attempted suicide bombing at Sbarro in Hod Hasharon ties personal rage to the expulsion of his grandparents from Sylia during the Nakba, his grandfather’s lost medical education, and the family’s subsequent refugee history. Kamal describes his intended attack as revenge and as an effort to kill as many Jews as possible. His story does not establish the Palestinian Authority as responsible for the attack, but it shows the historical injuries and militant narratives that any Palestinian political body must confront.

The novel places that account beside the Israeli military story of a soldier who shot two ten-year-old children in Southern Lebanon. The soldier claims not to remember the incident, while the surrounding explanations invoke possible bombs, hidden pistols, or stones. These competing forms of violence are not made morally identical, but they are presented within the same field of emergency justifications, damaged memory, and institutional power. The Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic role consequently exists under the pressure of violence committed by actors it may not fully control and violence carried out in the name of Israeli security.

The broader security environment remains unstable even as negotiations proceed. At the Kotel Tunnel, an interview takes place amid chanting and prayer before explosions, screams, sirens, and smoke abruptly break into the room. Later, the conflict continues through Hamas missiles and flammable kites from Gaza, followed by Israeli bombs, tanks, and new settlements. The Palestinian Authority is thus associated with an attempted political channel that never displaces the military and terrorist logics governing everyday life.

Secrecy, Journalism, and Political Calculation

Judah’s access to the London negotiations is itself shaped by secrecy. Charlie permits him to attend only under strict reporting restrictions, while Zehava insists that publishing the truth about Chaim’s death would endanger the peace effort. Her appeal turns the Palestinian Authority into the justification for withholding evidence: the prospect of negotiations is treated as a public good so fragile that it can supersede disclosure of a twenty-two-year-old killing.

Charlie reinforces that calculation after confirming that Zehava wrestled Chaim from the balcony and caused his death while claiming self-defense. He believes that pursuing prosecution would damage a woman essential to the peace process and thereby destroy the possibility of peace. Judah recognizes the power placed in his writing: he can become either a hero or a historic villain, depending on whether he publishes the scandal or protects the political opening. The organization’s diplomatic importance therefore becomes inseparable from a bargain among a political leader, a police official, and a journalist.

The investigation is also distorted by deliberate misdirection. Charlie admits that the supposed theories involving Rabbi Kaplowitz, Meir Alon, radical ideology, and blackmail were designed to prevent pressure for an investigation of Zehava. By feeding Judah a conspiratorial story without solid proof, Charlie could make any resulting article appear to be biased American journalism and a form of Israel bashing. The Palestinian Authority does not cause this deception, but the urgency of maintaining negotiations gives the deception its strongest political rationale.

Collapse and Aftermath

Zehava never achieves the peace she invokes. The London meetings end without agreement, and the report Judah eventually writes is buried in the middle of The Washington Post, where it attracts little attention. Suicide bombings diminish as Israel builds its West Bank barrier, but the underlying conflict continues. Hamas attacks, Israeli military retaliation, and the construction of new settlements replace the brief diplomatic hope with a renewed cycle of violence and territorial control.

The Palestinian Authority therefore remains a symbol of unrealized political capacity. It represents a level of Palestinian leadership capable of negotiating maps, borders, refugees, state recognition, and the future relationship between Gaza and the West Bank, yet it cannot overcome the unresolved structures and memories surrounding those questions. Its limited depiction is narratively significant: the institution is visible at the moment when peace seems administratively possible, but the negotiations reveal how quickly diplomatic procedure becomes overwhelmed by history, security, internal opposition, and the mutual need to preserve competing versions of innocence.