Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv serves as a recurring meeting place in the play’s account of the Oslo Channel: first as the site of a tense encounter in Terje Rød-Larsen’s office, then as the setting for two conversations with Yossi Beilin that shape the proposed back channel. The city’s significance lies in these concrete acts of contact and persuasion, rather than in being identified as the venue for the secret negotiations themselves.

Office and Framing Encounter

In a framing scene, the playwright places himself across from Terje Rød-Larsen in his Tel Aviv office. Before either man speaks, he realizes that it is not yet noon and that Larsen is drunk. The detail gives the encounter an unsettled, intimate quality: the account of high-stakes diplomacy begins not with a formal announcement but with a personal meeting whose first revelation is the condition of the man being interviewed.

The Tandoori Restaurant Meetings

A tandoori restaurant in Tel Aviv becomes a place where political strategy is discussed over lunch. With Israel only days from parliamentary elections and Yossi Beilin running for office, Mona Juul presses him to meet briefly with Larsen. In their conversation, Larsen contrasts the public, government-to-government talks with the alternative he proposes: an isolated setting for direct, private discussion between Beilin and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Tel Aviv is thus where the proposal for a separate channel is put to Beilin, even as the proposed meetings are meant to take place somewhere secluded.

The restaurant recurs after Larsen has flown back to Tel Aviv immediately following a two-day meeting with the Palestinians. He returns to the same table to tell Beilin that the discussions made striking progress and that the Palestinians wish to come back. The repeated setting marks a change in what Larsen can report: the first meeting advances a plan for contact; the later one carries news that the channel has produced momentum and may continue.

Narrative Significance

The scenes make Tel Aviv a point of return between the discreet diplomatic encounters and the efforts to secure political engagement. Its office and restaurant are ordinary settings for conversation, but what passes through them concerns the design and continuation of a secret channel. The play distinguishes these sites of approach from the isolated venue Larsen proposes for the actual discussions, giving Tel Aviv a role as a place where access is sought, proposals are framed, and progress is relayed.