Epstein Secrets

us into a small room in the bunker reserved for use by the Defense Minister. As Foreign Minister, I was the only cabinet member with him — along with Uri Savir, Peres’s senior deputy for peace negotiations and several other Peres aides. If there had been a discussion, I would have told him that as long as he

be at stake for Damascus, I certainly couldn’t see the Phalangists being able to drive them out by force. The more immediate, open question involved Arafat and the Palestinians. Our other two invasion forces had driven almost all the PLO fighters out of south Lebanon, though not without costs and casualt

s, and at the dinner held at one of King Juan Carlos’s palatial estates, and, for me, a first opportunity to meet not only Arab foreign ministers but Yasir Arafat. My first, brief encounter with Arafat began a bit embarrassingly. I’d arrived a few minutes early for the conference dinner and was led into an imp

n. At one point major tension erupted in the negotiations when Qurei demanded that Israel upgrade the official level of its emissaries; ultimately, Uri Savir, the director general of the Foreign Ministry, and attorney Joel Singer, who spoke directly on behalf of Prime Minister Rabin, joined the talks. Ma

onday at New York City's Lincoln Center, brings to life the largely unknown drama of the secret back-channel negotiations that resulted in PLO chief Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands over the first peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. While many memories of tha

first peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. While many memories of that momentous day, and of the famous agreement, focus on Rabin and Arafat and on the personal and political chasms they and their colleagues had to cross while forging it — the play focuses on other people: those who toil

a poignant multifacetedness, as sworn enemies find themselves tentatively speaking the language of friendship. This is most eloquently embodied by Uri Savir, an Israeli cabinet member portrayed juicily by Michael Aronov as an exuberant rock-star dignitary, and Ahmed Qurie , the P.L.O. finance minister p

o improbably initiated the diplomatic back channel that led to the epochal meeting of the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the P.L.O leader Yasir Arafat at the White House, "Oslo" affectingly elicits the all-too-human factor in the weary machinations of state policy. EFTA00666265 That couple is Mo

h Kashani as a hard-line Marxist Palestinian. Mr. Oreskes also shows up as Shimon Peres. But the most famous power players in this drama, Rabin and Arafat, never appear, at least not in the flesh. However, at various points, different characters do imitations of the more famous politicians who remain

us into a small room in the bunker reserved for use by the Defense Minister. As Foreign Minister, I was the only cabinet member with him - along with Uri Savir, Peres's senior deputy for peace negotiations and several other Peres aides. If there had been a discussion, I would have told him that as long as he

be at stake for Damascus, I certainly couldn't see the Phalangists being able to drive them out by force. The more immediate, open question involved Arafat and the Palestinians. Our other two invasion forces had driven almost all the PLO fighters out of south Lebanon, though not without costs and casualt

s, and at the dinner held at one of King Juan Carlos's palatial estates, and, for me, a first opportunity to meet not only Arab foreign ministers but Yasir Arafat. My first, brief encounter with Arafat began a bit embarrassingly. I'd arrived a few minutes early for the conference dinner and was led into an impr

Their efforts were rewarded with a momentous ceremony on the White House lawn in September 1993, with Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, and Yasser Arafat, the PLO chairman, shaking hands to seal the deal in front of a beaming president Bill Clinton. And sitting anonymously among the thousands of globa

them are no longer around to reflect on Rogers’s version of events. Rabin, the great Israeli warrior-turned-politician who agreed to make peace with Arafat, aman most Israelis, as one Israeli character in the play remarks, saw as being akin to “Hitler in his bunker”, was murdered by a Jewish extremist i

Arafat as an effeminate narcissist, a portrayal I found entirely plausible from my own encounters with the PLO leader, whose vanity knew no bounds. Uri Savir, who was deputed by Peres to run the Israeli side of the negotiations, was someone else I got to know during that period. An urbane multi-linguist of

ement) (28 September 1995) 145 Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH Agreement) (9 May 1996) 324 Declaration by PM Netanyahu and Chairman Arafat following their first meeting (4 September 1996) 327 Hebron Protocol (17 January 1997) 329 Note for the Record (17 January 1997) 336 HOUSE_OVERSIGH

est to Yossi Beilin, then Deputy Foreign Minister. Shortly afterwards, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres dispatched the Director General of the ministry, Uri Savir, and the head of the ministry’s legal department, Joel Singer, to Oslo. The Norwegians had, until then, seen the secret talks in Oslo and their poten