However, with the Israelis having declared it against the law for anyone from their government to meet with the PLO, initial meetings need to be held in secret and using other members of “the small country’s intelligentsia”. Yair Hirschfeld (Dov Glickman) is a professor of economics who sees many benefits in a negotiated peace and, after an initial London-based chat with the PLO’s Ahmed Queri (Slim Daw) goes well, Juul and Rød-Larsen decide to up the ante, by inviting them both and others to an informal summit at a remote country house near Oslo. There are those within the couple’s own government though, who believe their optimism is foolhardy and their goal simply unachievable. “In the last few years, the Berlin War has fallen, Russia has broken up, what better time to attempt the impossible?” Rød-Larsen retorts.
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"Oslo" chronicles the negotiations that led to the 1993 Peace Accords. But it can't bring itself to examine what started the conflict in the first place.
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HBO’s new drama “Oslo” goes behind the scenes of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, a landmark moment that marked the first face-to-face agreement between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and an unprecedented move toward peace.
Premiering Saturday, the drama chronicles the extraordinary efforts of Norwegians Mona Juul (Ruth Wilson), a Ministry of Foreign Affairs diplomat, and her spouse, Terje Rød-Larsen (Andrew Scott), a sociologist and director of the Fafo Foundation think tank, who together organized clandestine meetings between the warring parties in Oslo as an alternative to U.S.-led negotiations that had stalled. It resulted in not only the accord, but also the now-famous symbolic gesture of hope: a handshake between PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in front of President Clinton on the White House lawn. The final moments of the 118-minute film feature that image, as if to say: