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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: