Ron Pundak

Ron Pundak is presented as an Israeli participant in the clandestine Oslo Channel and as Yair Hirschfeld’s partner in drafting a joint Declaration of Principles. The play gives him a sharply social presence: he arrives grinning, tells a joke about intelligence agencies, and joins two days of work on a document meant to address the grievances of both sides. His scenes place the channel’s hopeful informality beside the persistent question of whether its language answers specific Palestinian proposals.

Identity and Introduction

The dramatis personae list Daniel Jenkins as the actor playing Pundak. At the first formal gathering at Borregaard Estate outside Sarpsborg, the stage directions place him alongside Hirschfeld, facing Ahmed Qurie and Hassan Asfour, while Terje Rød-Larsen stands between the two pairs. Pundak is described as being in his thirties, more casually dressed than the Palestinians, and grinning. These details establish him not through a biography, which the play does not supply, but through his position in the room and his ease within the Israeli delegation.

The meeting belongs to the unofficial Oslo Channel, opened in January 1993. The play frames this as an intimate alternative to formal government pronouncements: people from the opposing sides are brought together in isolation to speak directly. Pundak’s place beside Hirschfeld makes him part of that working pair, whose task is to produce language that can bridge political positions without the protection or formality of public negotiations.

Humor and the Negotiating Room

At an early meeting, Pundak interrupts the tense conversation to tell a joke involving Interpol, the CIA, Mossad, a rabbit, and a bear. In the joke, the first agencies search the forest or destroy it without finding the rabbit; Mossad returns with a bear that has been persuaded to claim it is a rabbit. The comedy draws on the agencies’ contrasting methods, but the scene also shows Pundak trying to make humor do immediate work among people who have not yet established trust.

He then directs a teasing remark at Asfour, calling attention to his apparent enjoyment of the joke by referring to him as Mr. Lenin. Qurie rises to answer with a joke of his own. The exchange does not erase the political difference in the room; instead, it gives the participants a brief, reciprocal way to test one another socially. Pundak’s humor is therefore part of the play’s account of how the secret channel proceeds: not only through written proposals, but through the fragile conversational conditions that allow the participants to remain together.

Drafting the Declaration of Principles

Pundak’s clearest sustained contribution comes in the joint drafting work with Hirschfeld. Over two days and nights, the Israeli and Palestinian participants work almost without stopping, amid repeated waffles, cigarettes, and coffee. Pundak and Hirschfeld hammer out a draft Declaration of Principles, or DOP, while Qurie and Asfour take part in the same effort. The document is described as radical and without precedent because it recognizes that each side has grievances and that both want to find a way forward.

That shared purpose does not mean the first draft satisfies the Palestinian side. When Qurie asks where it directly answers their concrete offer for control of Gaza, Hirschfeld replies that the draft contains specific proposals. Qurie rejects that defense, judging the language eloquent but general. Pundak is among the Israeli pair present as the draft is challenged, but the exchange assigns the spoken defense to Hirschfeld; the play does not give Pundak a separate reply. The distinction matters: participation in producing a shared document does not itself resolve disagreement over whether its words meet the other side’s actual offer.

From General Principles to Specific Terms

Later negotiations show how much work remains beyond the initial draft. In one exchange, Ahmed Qurie asks for a direct response concerning Gaza, while the Israeli side argues over whether the text is sufficiently specific. In another, Uri Savir says Israel is willing to discuss much of the document but first wants demands it regards as impossible removed. Savir then offers relinquishing control of Gaza, and Qurie conditions acceptance on Israel relinquishing control of Jericho at the same time. These later scenes do not identify Pundak as a speaker or participant; they make visible the larger negotiating problem that the drafting work initiated, rather than supplying additional actions for him.

The play also records a later proposal from Qurie that Palestinian forces share control of checkpoints while Israeli forces retain border security, followed by Peres’s refusal to concede control of the checkpoints. Pundak is not placed in that exchange either. The distinction between his documented role in the joint draft and later bargaining is important: the play presents him as a contributor to the channel’s early written work, not as a representative in every subsequent negotiation.

Narrative Role

Pundak’s stage presence connects the Oslo Channel’s private, improvised atmosphere to the hard test of drafting language that can carry actual political offers. His grin and joke offer a moment of levity, while the draft’s reception exposes the limits of goodwill and eloquence when a proposal demands a direct answer. The account gives him a defined collaborative role beside Hirschfeld, but not an independent account of his motives, history, or later choices. That restraint keeps the focus on the channel as collective labor: a document emerges from sustained work between adversaries, and its first words remain subject to dispute.