Oslo process

The Oslo process in the novel is both a possibility of Israeli–Palestinian peace and a pressure placed on those who might expose an inconvenient truth. It first appears as a dividing line in Israeli politics, then as the promise of negotiations led by Zehava Lerner, and finally as a brief series of secret London meetings that fail to produce an agreement. Its political weight becomes inseparable from Judah Loeb’s choice to conceal what he learns about Chaim Lerner’s death.

Political meanings and competing positions

For Michal, the Oslo process represents a political course she opposes. Years after Judah knew her, she has entered politics on the other side from Zehava Lerner, writing attacks on the process and suggesting that the only solution may be to expel all Palestinians from Israel. Judah notes that she did not support Rabin’s assassination, but says she blames the left. His account places the process inside a bitter struggle over not only whether peace is possible, but what political positions are treated as legitimate. Michal’s stance also shows how the process remains an active public controversy long after Judah’s earlier life in Israel.

When Zehava’s political fortunes rise, the process acquires a more immediate and uncertain meaning. After her activism during the Second Intifada makes her a leading figure in Israel’s political opposition, pundits predict that she could become prime minister. Her possible entry into a government coalition prompts two sharply different readings: Sharon may be broadening the coalition to support an invasion of the West Bank, or he may be bringing Zehava in to negotiate peace. Charlie presents both possibilities to Judah, while saying he hopes for the latter. The same political maneuver can thus signal escalation or negotiation; at this point, peace is a possibility, not an established outcome.

Zehava’s promise and the stakes of disclosure

Charlie describes Zehava as having a proposal to end the fighting and credibility with both Sharon and Arafat. When Judah later meets her, she says she is about to join the government and is negotiating with senior figures in the Palestinian Authority. She presents the opportunity as unusually consequential: both sides, she argues, trust her enough to make a permanent settlement possible. She warns that religious right-wing opponents could undermine the effort and that a mistake could cost her position in government. In her appeal to Judah, the proposed peace is not merely a national achievement but something with consequences beyond Israel.

That prospect becomes an argument against publishing Judah’s findings about Chaim’s death. Zehava tells him that the political moment is delicate and that damaging her character could endanger the negotiations. She also warns that few people would corroborate his account and that many Israelis would trust her over a foreign journalist. The appeal binds disclosure to a feared political consequence: Judah is asked to weigh a possible exposure of past violence against a peace effort presented as exceptionally rare. Charlie reinforces the same calculation, telling Judah that Zehava was essential to the suddenly flourishing process and that damaging her reputation could destroy the dream of Israel at peace with its neighbors.

The novel then complicates the scale of that promise. Judah later says that Zehava never negotiated peace in the sense her political appeal had suggested: she and her team held one round of secret meetings with Palestinian negotiators in London. This is not an absence of contact, but a sharp distinction between a promising opening and an actual settlement. Charlie arranges for Judah to attend under conditions: he must delay reporting until a final deal is reached and, even then, use no direct quotations. The terms of access make the negotiations visible to Judah while keeping them largely unavailable to the public.

The London talks and their limits

At the London meetings, the parties exchange maps. Israel offers roughly 95 percent of the West Bank; the Palestinians insist on the whole territory, with small border adjustments to accommodate most Jewish settlers. Judah is not permitted to study the maps, but catches enough of a glimpse to see that Pisgat David falls on the Palestinian side in both versions. The settlement’s placement gives the territorial dispute a concrete form: the lines are not abstract proposals but boundaries that would assign a specific place to one side or the other. Judah wonders what Chaim would have made of that detail.

On territory, the proposals initially seem not far apart, and the first encounter carries some warmth and hope. The talks nevertheless move into disputes that prove much harder to resolve: the division of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees’ right of return, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, the connection between Gaza and the West Bank, and the role of Hamas. The meetings, which last a week, disintegrate into bitter arguments. Participants from both sides privately tell Judah why the other side is responsible for the collapse. Because each account assigns blame elsewhere, he wonders whether the meeting was partly a performance, allowing both sides to demonstrate willingness to compromise while portraying the other as unreasonable. The narrative offers that suspicion as Judah’s question, not as a proven explanation.

Secrecy, accountability, and aftermath

The peace prospect shapes a second, private negotiation: the one between Judah and Charlie over what can be reported about Chaim. Charlie confirms that Zehava had wrestled Chaim off the balcony and killed him, while accepting her claim of self-defense. He also tells Judah that Chaim was cruel and violent toward those closest to him, complicating the public image of the revered figure. Earlier, Charlie had sent Judah toward false theories involving ideological enemies and blackmail; Judah recognizes this as a disinformation strategy intended to discourage an investigation of Zehava. Political protection and investigative obstruction thus converge around the same person, while the stated defense of peace makes concealment seem like a possible obligation.

Judah accepts Charlie’s deal. He writes a book that leaves Chaim’s death unresolved, offering possible explanations ranging from suicide and illness to accident or murder, while acknowledging that these speculations are fiction. The book’s silence about what Judah has learned is the lasting consequence of treating political opportunity as a reason to withhold the truth. The London talks themselves also remain incomplete: after their collapse, the article Judah eventually writes about the conference is buried in the newspaper and attracts little attention.

In the same retrospective account, suicide bombings subside as Israel builds its West Bank barrier, but violence does not end. Hamas missiles and flammable kites from Gaza are followed by Israeli bombs, tanks, and new settlements; the West Bank becomes quieter but remains subject to terrorist violence, and Israel is not free of it. A bomb outside the Russian Compound kills Charlie, the head of Israel’s police homicide division and Judah’s friend. The peace process therefore persists less as a completed resolution than as an unrealized promise, repeatedly invoked amid violence and political calculation. Its significance lies partly in that gap: the possibility of peace is powerful enough to shape what characters reveal, yet the negotiations described in the novel neither settle the conflict nor absolve those who use the prospect to silence investigation.