13 September 1993

13 September 1993 is presented as the public culmination of the secret diplomacy behind the Oslo Accords: at the White House, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands before President Bill Clinton. The date joins a celebrated image of reconciliation to the slower, riskier work that preceded it, and to the negotiations’ unresolved conflicts that remained after the ceremony.

The date and its public image

The date is first recalled through the televised signing ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. The playwright already knows the handshake’s power to provoke both joy and rage around the world; what he does not know, until Terje Rød-Larsen tells him, is that a clandestine diplomatic back channel helped make the accords possible. The revelation shifts the date’s meaning from a singular public spectacle to the visible endpoint of work conducted out of sight by Israeli, Palestinian, and Norwegian participants.

The play returns to the date in Washington, D.C., at the White House reception following the ceremony. Mona Juul identifies the moment directly as 13 September 1993 while Terje Rød-Larsen arranges seating for the reception with Thor Bjornevog and Trond Gundersen assisting him. The ceremony is thus followed not by an abstract historical tableau but by the practical business of hosting its participants.

The secret process behind the ceremony

The back channel’s method contrasts with formal exchanges between governments. Terje Rød-Larsen proposes a second channel built on intimate conversations between people, rather than grand governmental pronouncements: a place isolated enough for the Palestinians and Israelis to meet and talk alone. The channel’s secrecy and informality are not incidental; they offer a way to begin contact where official relations and political restrictions make it difficult.

The stage gives that discreet process concrete form when Ahmed Qurie appears to speak with Terje Rød-Larsen as if by telephone. Qurie says that, on arrival, he expects Rød-Larsen to meet the Palestinian visitors personally and to handle their passports himself. The detail makes the channel’s trust and vulnerability visible: access and safe passage depend on personal assurances, not merely on an announced diplomatic framework.

From proposals to official status

The date also stands at the far end of negotiations in which the participants repeatedly contest what a meaningful agreement must contain. Ahmed Qurie asks where the Israelis’ direct reply is to the Palestinians’ concrete offer to take control of Gaza. Yair Hirschfeld answers that his and Ron Pundak’s draft of the Declaration of Principles (DOP) contains specific proposals; Qurie dismisses them as eloquent generalities. Their exchange exposes a central tension in the process: broad language may keep discussion alive, but it does not necessarily answer a demand for concrete control.

The argument over status is equally consequential. After a two-day meeting, Terje Rød-Larsen tells Yossi Beilin that the Palestinian participants wish to return and presses him to upgrade the Israeli delegation to official status. Beilin replies that Israel has no delegation to upgrade and that doing so would be illegal. The channel can make progress precisely because it is unofficial, yet that same informality limits what its participants can claim to represent.

The negotiations nonetheless move toward formal recognition of the channel. On behalf of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the State of Israel, Joel Singer offers to make the back channel the official channel. Ahmed Qurie immediately asks what this means for the Washington-sponsored talks. The offer marks a change in the channel’s standing, but it does not make the wider diplomatic arrangement simple or erase the question of how different negotiating tracks relate to one another.

Agreement, disagreement, and the closing image

The play does not present the ceremony’s date as proof that every dispute has been settled. In one negotiation, Ahmed Qurie agrees that Israeli forces may be responsible for border security while insisting that Palestinian forces have joint control of all checkpoints. Shimon Peres refuses to cede that point; Qurie answers with a threat to burn the document and wage war, while still leaving the door open to a counterproposal. The exchange places the handshake’s promise beside the hard bargaining and explicit possibility of renewed conflict.

In the final image, the company turns toward footage of the Rose Garden ceremony: Rabin and Arafat shake hands, with Clinton standing between them. Rabin’s recorded address speaks of the two peoples living together on the same land and calls for an end to blood and tears. The company then turns to face the audience. The date therefore functions both as a historical destination and as a theatrical question held open: a public gesture of peace is made visible, while the human and political work required to give it substance remains in view.