Israel

Israel is portrayed less as a described physical setting than as a state whose political constraints and negotiating positions shape the secret channel at the heart of the play. Its representatives meet PLO delegates outside the established public talks, confront incompatible accounts of the conflict, and eventually offer to bring the channel into the official diplomatic process.

Political setting and dramatic frame

The play places Israel within the history leading to the Oslo Accords. In the playwright’s account of the project, the public signing ceremony between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat was already familiar; the less familiar story was the clandestine channel involving Israeli, Palestinian, and Norwegian participants that helped make the accords possible. The drama concentrates on that channel rather than attempting a full account of the conflict.

The playwright says the historical events in Oslo are true while also acknowledging theatrical reinvention. Israel therefore appears within a deliberately bounded dramatic reconstruction: the action draws on a specific period and the political rupture surrounding the negotiations, while shaping those events to emphasize the participants’ decision to encounter their enemies as people. The country’s significance in the play rests on this collision between a history of antagonism and the possibility of conversation.

From unofficial contact toward authorization

The channel is proposed as an alternative to formal pronouncements between governments: intimate discussions between people, held in an isolated place where Israeli representatives and the PLO can meet directly. Terje Rød-Larsen presents this arrangement as a second channel that he can oversee and establish. Its separation from official negotiations is central to its initial operation, but it also creates a question of authority: contact can begin before the Israeli side has a delegation it can legally recognize as official.

That boundary becomes explicit when Rød-Larsen argues that the Israeli delegation should be upgraded after a productive two-day meeting and the Palestinian participants’ stated wish to return. Yossi Beilin replies that Israel has no delegation to upgrade and that doing so would be illegal. The exchange makes the channel’s political status part of the negotiation itself: its participants are making progress, but their work has not yet acquired formal standing.

Later, the Israeli position changes. Speaking for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the State of Israel, Joel Singer offers to make the back channel the official channel. The offer marks a transition from private contact to government-authorized negotiation, although Ahmed Qurie immediately asks what this means for the Washington-sponsored talks. The play thus presents official recognition not as a simple endpoint, but as a change that raises further questions about the relationship between parallel diplomatic processes.

Disputes over territory, security, and recognition

The negotiations expose a sharp difference between broad formulations and concrete proposals. Ahmed Qurie asks where the Israeli side’s direct reply is to the Palestinian offer to take control of Gaza. Yair Hirschfeld points to the draft Declaration of Principles, but Qurie objects that its language consists of generalities rather than a specific answer. Israel’s negotiating position is consequently tested against the practical question of whether control will change hands.

The arguments also reveal the distrust each delegation brings into the room. Uri Savir describes the Israeli view of the PLO through violence and threats; Qurie answers with a Palestinian account of persecution, displacement, and violence by Israel. Neither account dissolves the conflict. Their exchange instead establishes the burden the negotiators must work through before a proposal can be treated as more than an expression of hostility.

On Jerusalem, Savir states that Israel will not negotiate the city’s sovereignty, either in the room or in a document. On Gaza, however, he says Israel is willing to relinquish control, and Qurie makes acceptance conditional on Israel relinquishing control of Jericho at the same time. The contrast distinguishes a declared limit from a negotiable exchange: the participants can discuss territorial arrangements, but not every question is admitted to the bargaining process.

A later exchange shows how proposals accumulate through conditional concessions. Qurie agrees to drop the demand that outstanding disputes be referred to third-party international arbitration; Savir agrees to negotiate the transfer of Gaza and Jericho. Near the end of the play, Qurie accepts Israeli forces’ responsibility for border security while insisting that Palestinian forces share control of checkpoints. Shimon Peres refuses to concede that point, and Qurie couples a threat to reject the document with an openness to a counterproposal. The scene presents Israel’s security position and the Palestinian demand for shared authority as connected, contested questions rather than isolated clauses.

Recognition and the channel’s significance

The eventual exchange of recognition gives the negotiations a different kind of substance. Peres agrees to accept the Palestine Liberation Organization as the official voice of the Palestinian people; Qurie accepts the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and the parties agree. In the play, these are not abstract affirmations detached from the bargaining. They follow disputes over territory, borders, and authority, and show the channel reaching an agreement on the mutual political standing of the parties.

The dramatic movement is from a proposed private meeting, through resistance to official status and repeated argument over specific terms, to an offer that the channel become official and reciprocal recognition. Israel remains a party with stated limits and unresolved security concerns, but it is also represented through negotiators who make proposals and accept changes. That movement reflects the play’s central emphasis: the possibility of diplomacy depends not on erasing the conflict, but on allowing people on opposing sides to listen, negotiate, and alter what they are willing to recognize.