Palestine Liberation Organization

The Palestine Liberation Organization is the Palestinian political body at the center of the secret negotiations that lead toward the Oslo Accords. The play presents it not merely as the counterpart Israel must meet, but as an organization whose standing is itself disputed: its representatives seek recognition as the official voice of the Palestinian people, while insisting that a negotiation about their future cannot proceed as though that political identity were already settled. Its passage from clandestine interlocutor to proposed official negotiating partner gives the channel both its diplomatic purpose and its central conflict.

Identity and Place in the Negotiations

The Palestine Liberation Organization enters the play through a secret back channel that brings Israeli and Palestinian representatives together face-to-face in Norway. Terje Rød-Larsen tells Johan Jorgen Holst that the meetings are taking place in the country, not far away, and that the parties are meeting in person. The arrangement is deliberately separated from public, government-to-government pronouncements: Terje Rød-Larsen proposes intimate discussions between people, in an isolated place where the Palestine Liberation Organization can meet the Israelis alone. The channel’s informality creates room for contact that official diplomacy cannot yet acknowledge, but it also leaves the organization’s representatives and their Israeli counterparts exposed to questions of authority and legitimacy.

In the book’s account of the negotiations, the clandestine channel is the route through which the Oslo Accords are made possible. The author describes the agreement as the first peace deal between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and recalls its signing ceremony in the White House Rose Garden on 13 September 1993. The play turns attention away from the televised handshake alone and toward the secret work that preceded it: a small group of Israeli, Palestinian, and Norwegian participants trying to change the political reality of two peoples. The organization’s presence in that process is therefore both practical and symbolic: its representatives negotiate terms, while their participation challenges the exclusion that had kept the two sides apart.

Representatives, Secrecy, and Authority

Ahmed Qurie and Hassan Asfour represent the Palestine Liberation Organization in the dramatic negotiations. Their presence is initially protected by concealment and careful arrangements. When Ahmed Qurie appears in a simulated telephone conversation, he specifies that Terje Rød-Larsen must meet the delegation personally on arrival and that no one else may handle its passports. The detail makes security part of the organization’s negotiating conditions: access and safe passage cannot be treated as incidental courtesies when the meeting itself is secret.

The participants also use code names to reduce the danger of speaking plainly over the telephone. The Palestine Liberation Organization becomes Those Across the Sea, while Yasser Arafat is assigned the code name Grandfather. Ahmed Qurie is associated with the code name Puntoffle. The labels make the organization’s presence legible to the audience while dramatizing how much of its diplomacy depends on disguising the very identities that must eventually be recognized. Secrecy permits the encounter to continue; it cannot, by itself, confer authority on the people conducting it.

That uncertainty is explicit when the Palestinian side presses to have its delegation upgraded. Yossi Beilin rejects the idea that the Israeli side can simply send an official delegation, arguing that Israel has no delegation to upgrade and that doing so would be illegal. He also instructs Terje Rød-Larsen to convey that the Israeli side will decide whom it sends, and that a request for upgraded status will be considered only when the Palestine Liberation Organization puts something substantive on the table. The exchange exposes the unstable status of the channel: the parties negotiate as representatives, yet the official standing of their representatives remains contested.

Concrete Proposals and Contested Recognition

The organization’s bargaining position is expressed through specific proposals as well as claims to political standing. In one tense document review, Ahmed Qurie asks where the Israeli draft directly answers the Palestinian offer to take control of Gaza. Yair Hirschfeld points to the Declaration of Principles as containing Israeli proposals; Ahmed Qurie dismisses them as eloquent generalities rather than a direct response to the concrete offer. The disagreement is not simply over tone. It concerns whether the text answers a defined territorial proposal or substitutes broad language for a commitment the Palestinian side can evaluate.

The dispute over the delegation’s status becomes reciprocal. Yossi Beilin says that a substantive offer is required before the Israelis will consider the requested upgrade. Ahmed Qurie answers that the Palestine Liberation Organization has already offered to take Gaza off Israel’s hands, and demands an upgrade in return. This exchange gives the organizational demand a negotiating logic: recognition is not treated as an unrelated concession, but as reciprocity for a substantive offer. At the same time, the Israeli response shows that the parties do not agree on what counts as substance or on who has the power to make a commitment on behalf of their side.

Territorial questions further reveal the gap between positions and possible exchanges. Uri Savir says that Israel is willing to relinquish control of Gaza; Ahmed Qurie answers that the Palestine Liberation Organization will accept that transfer only if Israel relinquishes control of Jericho at the same time. The proposal couples the two territories rather than treating Gaza as a sufficient concession on its own. In another exchange, Ahmed Qurie states that the Palestinian side will drop its demand for third-party international arbitration over outstanding disputes. Uri Savir responds that the Israeli side will negotiate the transfer of Gaza and Jericho. Each move is presented as a conditional bargain, with the organization seeking terms that can be traded rather than a one-sided declaration of intent.

From Secret Channel to Official Partner

The strongest change in the Palestine Liberation Organization’s position within the play occurs when Joel Singer, speaking on behalf of Yitzhak Rabin and Israel, proposes that the back channel become the official channel. The offer follows a direct exchange over legitimacy. Joel Singer says that the document requires the Israeli side to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Palestine Liberation Organization; Ahmed Qurie replies that the parties can revisit that legitimacy when the document identifies the organization as the official voice of the Palestinian people. The dispute makes clear that the parties are demanding different forms of recognition: one concerns the organization’s legitimacy, the other its representative authority.

The proposed transition does not erase the Washington-sponsored talks, which Ahmed Qurie immediately asks about. Rather, it marks a change in status for the secret channel and for the organization participating in it. What began as a contact that had to be hidden is now being offered a route into official diplomacy. The proposal is consequential, but it does not mean that every issue has been resolved or that the parties already share a definition of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s standing.

In the final, strained bargaining over the document, the organization’s representatives continue to press specific terms. Ahmed Qurie offers to accept Israeli forces in charge of border security, but insists that Palestinian forces have joint control of all checkpoints. When the Israeli response rejects that condition, he threatens to burn the document and wage war, while also remaining open to a counterproposal. The play places that threat beside continuing negotiation rather than treating the exchange as a clean break. As the participants argue, hang up, call back, and push on, Shimon Peres agrees that the Palestine Liberation Organization is the official voice of the Palestinian people; Ahmed Qurie then accepts the legitimacy of Israel. Recognition, in this closing sequence, takes the form of reciprocal commitments reached under pressure.

Historical and Dramatic Significance

The organization’s dramatic trajectory is a movement from clandestine presence toward explicit political acknowledgment, but the play does not reduce that movement to a ceremonial success. Its representatives must secure practical answers on territory, arbitration, security, and checkpoints even as they argue over whether the organization may speak for the Palestinian people. The tension between concrete proposals and contested status recurs throughout the negotiations: a draft may gesture toward agreement without answering an offer, and a channel may enable dialogue without yet possessing official authority.

The book’s framing also preserves the controversy surrounding the Oslo Channel. It records both the view that the secret negotiations were a necessary, bold attempt to bring peace to the Middle East and the opposing judgment that they were reckless, naive interference that added to the region’s anguish. Against that divided assessment, the play’s treatment of the Palestine Liberation Organization keeps attention on the people required to negotiate before their meeting can be publicly recognized. The organization’s changing status is not a resolution of every conflict; it is the crucial transformation by which a hidden interlocutor becomes an acknowledged party to the proposed agreement.