Tunis

Tunis functions as a crucial but uncertain point of access to Palestinian leadership in the play’s account of the Oslo Channel. Larsen’s visit there to meet Yasser Arafat helps reassure Mona Juul that Arafat knows about the secret negotiations; later, when the talks urgently require contact with Ahmed Qurie, even his presence in Tunis is unclear.

Tunis and the Oslo Channel

The play situates Tunis within a clandestine diplomatic process that helped make the Oslo Accords possible. Its back channel relied on contact among Israeli, Palestinian, and Norwegian participants, outside the grand public pronouncements of government-to-government diplomacy. Larsen proposes an isolated place for private discussions between Israeli representatives and the Palestine Liberation Organization, but the play does not identify that proposed meeting place as Tunis. Tunis instead appears as a location associated with reaching Palestinian leaders and confirming that the secret process has their awareness.

Larsen’s meeting with Arafat

When Jan Egeland questions whether Ahmed Qurie has told Arafat about the negotiations, Mona answers that Terje Rød-Larsen went to Tunis and spent the day with Arafat. The visit serves as evidence within the argument: the channel is not simply an unauthorized undertaking by Qurie, detached from the Palestinian leadership. Larsen then gives Egeland a photograph as a commemoration of the encounter, turning the trip into a tangible sign of contact. The scene presents Tunis as part of the channel’s political reach, without supplying details about the meeting itself.

A location, not a reliable line

Tunis’s association with leadership does not make communication easy. Near the end of the play, Larsen rejects the idea of simply dialing Tunis, explaining that Arafat is unreachable by phone. Mona then asks where Ahmed Qurie is and whether he is in Tunis; Larsen does not know. The questions leave the location unresolved at the very moment when the negotiators need to find their counterpart. Tunis thus marks both a route toward political authority and the limits of the channel’s ability to summon the people on whom it depends.