In the play, Stockholm becomes the discreet meeting place where the Oslo Channel approaches an official, high-stakes negotiation. A secret flight, a Swedish royal guesthouse, and a phone line connecting Shimon Peres to Yasser Arafat place the city at the threshold between clandestine diplomacy and a possible agreement—without making it the site of an easy or completed peace.

A setting for secret diplomacy

Stockholm enters the story as a destination chosen for secrecy and political access. Yossi Beilin tells Terje Rød-Larsen to assemble his team and fly there the next day without public notice. Shimon Peres is due to attend a state dinner, after which he will meet the team at the royal guesthouse for visiting dignitaries. The location thus serves two needs at once: it brings the Norwegian intermediaries close to an Israeli political leader, while keeping the encounter apart from ordinary public negotiations.

That arrangement extends the method proposed earlier by Rød-Larsen: not grand declarations between governments, but private discussions among people, held somewhere isolated where Israeli and Palestinian representatives could speak directly. The secret Oslo Channel had made the agreements possible, and its importance had already been acknowledged in an offer to turn the back channel into the official channel. Stockholm is the setting for the next, more direct stage of that transition.

Arrival and the meeting place

The action shifts from the plan to its execution with the terse stage direction that it is Stockholm the following night. The meeting is placed at the Swedish royal guesthouse for visiting dignitaries. Its hostess looks at Rød-Larsen and Juul as they arrive, briefly bringing the practical, human presence of the venue into a scene organized around coded messages and political maneuvering.

The play does not present Stockholm as a public conference hall or a formal diplomatic gathering. Instead, the guesthouse gives the negotiations a private setting, while the secret journey and the anticipated meeting after Peres’s state dinner show how closely the operation depends on discretion and timing.

From a private meeting to a phone negotiation

The expected encounter changes form when Rød-Larsen raises the problem of conducting negotiations between two parties. Peres replies that they will do it by phone and instructs him to call Tunis and have Arafat put on the line. The scene therefore makes Stockholm a connection point rather than a room in which the two principal leaders meet face to face: Peres is there, while Arafat is reached remotely.

The telephone conversation does not erase the underlying disputes. In a later exchange, Ahmed Qurie says that the Palestinian side will accept Israeli forces handling border security if Palestinian forces have joint control of all checkpoints. Peres refuses to yield on the checkpoints. Qurie responds with a threat to burn the document and wage war, but also leaves the way open for a counterproposal. The sequence makes the limits of the Stockholm setting clear: secrecy and access can bring the parties into contact, but they do not remove the hard bargaining over security and control.

Narrative significance

Stockholm concentrates the play’s contrast between diplomatic form and diplomatic substance. The back channel began as an alternative to formal government pronouncements, then received an offer of official standing; here, that evolving channel carries a direct call between Peres and Arafat. Yet the phone connection produces negotiation, not instant resolution. The location marks an escalation in access and political authority while the unresolved checkpoint dispute keeps the promised peace conditional.

The city’s importance is consequently tied less to a description of Stockholm itself than to what the secret mission makes possible there: a meeting arranged outside the public arena, followed by direct contact across distance. The guesthouse and telephone frame a moment of diplomatic possibility whose outcome remains dependent on whether the participants can turn access into agreement.