Title: The Norway channel
First published: 1994
Description: On September 13, 1993, the world watched, thrilled and still disbelieving, as on the sunny White House lawn the prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and the president of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, shook hands, thereby sealing the Declaration of Principles, the beginning of a peace agreement for the Middle East. The Norway Channel tells how this accord between representatives of two ancient enemies - an accord that had eluded presidents, secretaries of state, special envoys, and numerous back channel negotiators - was accomplished by an unknown Norwegian couple. For nine months, in Norwegian country mansions and homely log cabins, far from the prying eyes of the media and the critical forces within their own communities, Israelis and Palestinians ate, drank, walked, and laughed together as they hammered out a peace deal.^

There were moments of high drama, screaming matches, and sometimes farce, but the participants resolved never to look back into their troubled history and blame one another. They would only look forward, to the futures of their children and of the generations to come. The two sides were brought together by a remarkable husband and wife team, Norwegians Torje Larsen and Mona Juul. They created the framework of what came to be known as the Norway Channel and kept it going through the roller coaster of euphoria and depression that characterized the meetings. Larsen is a social scientist who runs a research institute; Juul is a middle-ranking official at the Foreign Ministry. The Norway Channel brings to life the characters involved on both sides. For the Israelis there was an idealistic young Labour MP, Yossi Beilin, whose courage launched the channel, and his best friend, Uri Savir, an urbane young diplomat and masterful tactician.^

Joel Singer, a tough lawyer and former colonel in the Israeli military, and Yair Hirschfeld, an absent-minded professor, completed the team from Jerusalem. For the Palestinians there was a wily banker, Abu Ala, a complex mix of pragmatism, charm, and ruthlessness, and Hassan Asfour, a young firebrand and former Communist whose ideology was shaken by the realization that a bitter enemy can become a friend. Behind the protagonists were the power brokers: in Norway, the ambitious foreign minister, Johan Jorgen Holst, who came to realize that his country could pull off a daring diplomatic feat where America had failed; in Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, the celebrated general turned prime minister, and Shimon Peres, his foreign minister and political rival, who had long had a vision of peace with his Arab neighbors.^

And on the Palestinian side the motivating force was the great survivor Yasser Arafat, the charismatic leader who for years had sworn that he would never return to his land until Israel had been driven into the sea. The Norway Channel reveals the unique method of negotiations developed by the Norwegians to bring about the historic handshake on the White House lawn, a method that is likely to provide a model for bringing peace to world conflicts in the future. The story of how Larsen and Juul initiated and nurtured the most unexpected peace agreement since World War II reads like a thriller - but a thriller with a difference, for at stake was the future of millions in the Middle East.
Subjects: Arab-Israeli conflict, International Mediation, Israel, Israel. 1993 Sept. 13, Jewish-Arab relations, Mediation, International, Munaẓẓamat al-Taḥrīr al-Filasṭīnīyah, Israel. 1993 September 13, Holocaust survivors, Jews, identity
Places: Israel
Time periods: 1973-
LC classification: DS119.7 .C665 1994