Why the movie Oslo is a missed opportunity for Hollywood middleeasteye.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from middleeasteye.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
"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:
We will facilitate and facilitate only.
Mona Juul (Ruth Wilson) makes her husband Terje Rød-Larsen (Andrew Scott) repeat these words forces him, really just before their guests arrive at Norway s Booregaard Manor. This is no cocktail party. The guests come from both sides of one of the most intractable conflicts of the 20th- and 21st century. The Norwegian couple, without official government approval, opened up secret back channels, bypassing the traditional diplomatic process. Under the auspices of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where Mona is employed) and Fafo Foundation (Terje s think tank), the couple hope to facilitate a dialogue between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (then exiled in Tunis). Mona and Terje will not insert themselves into the process. They will facilitate only. The result of all of this, of course, were the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, and the subject of HBO s Oslo, premiering this weekend.