OSLO - Lincoln Center Theater Review by Lincoln Center Theater

Summer 2016 Issue No.67

OSLO

Lincoln Center Theater Review A publication of Lincoln Center Theater Summer 2016, Issue Number 67 Alexis Gargagliano, Editor John Guare, Anne Cattaneo, Executive Editors Tamar Cohen, Art Direction, Design David Leopold, Picture Editor Carol Anderson, Copy Editor

During the run of Lincoln Center Theater’s production of J. T. Rogers’s Blood and Gifts in 2011, director Bartlett Sher introduced two Norwegian diplomats (a husband and wife) to the playwright. In the lobby after the show, they told Rogers, “We have a tale, and we have been waiting twenty years for the right person to tell it to.” Over drinks they revealed that they had played a major role

The Vivian Beaumont Theater, Inc., Board of Directors J. Tomilson Hill, Chairman Eric M. Mindich, President Marlene Hess, Brooke Garber Neidich, and Leonard Tow, Vice Chairmen Augustus K. Oliver, Chairman, Executive Committee John W. Rowe, Treasurer Elizabeth Peters, Secretary

in secretly organizing the back-channel talks that led to the Oslo Accords—an agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) that was signed in 1993. Thus a seed was planted, Photograph © Terje Sten Johansen.

André Bishop Producing Artistic Director Annette Tapert Allen Jessica M. Bibliowicz Allison M. Blinken James-Keith Brown R. Jeep Bryant H. Rodgin Cohen Jonathan Z. Cohen Ida Cole David DiDomenico Curtland E. Fields Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Judith Hiltz Linda LeRoy Janklow, Chairman Emeritus Jane Lisman Katz Betsy Kenny Lack

Kewsong Lee Memrie M. Lewis Ninah Lynne Phyllis Mailman Ellen R. Marram John Morning Elyse Newhouse Robert Pohly Stephanie Shuman Josh Silverman David F. Solomon Tracey Travis David Warren Robert G. Wilmers William D. Zabel

John B. Beinecke, Chairman Emeritus, Mrs. Leonard Block, John S. Chalsty, Constance L. Clapp, Ellen Katz, Victor H. Palmieri, Elihu Rose, Daryl Roth, Lowell M. Schulman Honorary Trustees Hon. John V. Lindsay Founding Chairman

In this issue of the Lincoln Center Theater Review we tried to capture the complexity of feelings,

Goldstein, an Israeli-American writer, describes the culture shock she experienced after moving to the United States and having to learn to see another point of view about the country that had raised her. Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian writer and lawyer, recalls first learning that the Oslo Accords

had been signed. With her essay on Gertrude Bell—writer, traveler, representative of the British Empire in Iraq in the early 1900s—Milbry Polk reminds us that Mona Juul is a member of the small tribe of

An Oslo Chronology

The Peace That Ended Peace by Raja Shehadeh

A Cuisine of Collaboration: An Interview with Einat Admony A Feast for Peace by Einat Admony

Western women who have worked for peace in the Middle East. The former F.B.I. international-kidnapping negotiator Chris Voss teaches us the art of negotiation. And, finally, the celebrated Israeli chef Einat Admony shares some treasured recipes and spoke to us about the power of food to connect

You in the Wrong Place by Naama Goldstein

The Art of Negotiation by Chris Voss

overcome their fears and mistrust to forge an unheard-of peace.

Kingdom, about how she and her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, came to play such a key role. Naama

The Art of Diplomacy: An Interview with Mona Juul

Special thanks to the Drue Heinz Trust for supporting the Lincoln Center Theater Review.

Our deepest appreciation for the support provided to the Lincoln Center Theater Review by the Christopher Lightfoot Walker Literary Fund at Lincoln Center Theater.

Israelis, Palestinians, and Norwegians—struggling with their ambitions and passions, working to

who orchestrated these historic talks, Mona Juul, now the Norwegian ambassador to the United

OSLO

The Rosenthal Family Foundation—Jamie Rosenthal Wolf, David Wolf, Rick Rosenthal, and Nancy Stephens, Directors—is the Lincoln Center Theater Review’s founding and sustaining donor.

Lincoln Center Theater is grateful to Louis Cullman and Louise Hirschfeld Cullman for their leadership challenge grant in support of the Lincoln Center Theater Review and to those friends of the Theater who made special contributions to meet the challenge, including the Arnhold Foundation, Sondra Gilman & Celso Gonzalez-Falla, Marlene Hess & James D. Zirin, Bill Zabel, and other generous donors.

one of the most fraught political relationships of our time. At its heart, the play is about people—

history and culture that set the stage for the Oslo Accords. We interviewed one member of the couple

The Love of Desert Lands by Milbry Polk

This edition of the Lincoln Center Theater Review is also supported by the David C. Horn Foundation.

starting Rogers on a road of reading and research that led to the writing of his next play Oslo, about

people—as it does in J. T. Rogers’s illuminating and compelling play. —Alexis Gargagliano

HIERARCHY OF POWER IN THE PLAY Chairman of the P.L.O. Yasser Arafat

Finance Minister of P.L.O. Ahmed Qurie (Abu Ala)

23 P.L.O. Liaison Hassan Asfour

Back-cover artwork by Joyce Kozloff, Palestine, collage and digital archival inkjet print, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and DC Moore Gallery. The photo above is the room in which the negotiations between the P.L.O. and the Israelis took place, at Borregaard Manor, Norway.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin Foreign Minister Shimon Peres

Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst

Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin

Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Egeland

Director General of the Foreign Ministry Uri Savir

Official in the Foreign Ministry Mona Juul

Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry Joel Singer

Fafo Institute Director Terje Rød-Larsen

Professor Yair Hirschfeld

Fafo Executive Marianne Heiberg, married to Foreign Minister Holst

Professor Ron Pundak

In this issue of the Lincoln Center Theater Review we tried to capture the complexity of feelings,

An Oslo Chronology

The Peace That Ended Peace by Raja Shehadeh

A Cuisine of Collaboration: An Interview with Einat Admony A Feast for Peace by Einat Admony

You in the Wrong Place by Naama Goldstein

The Art of Negotiation by Chris Voss

overcome their fears and mistrust to forge an unheard-of peace.

Kingdom, about how she and her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, came to play such a key role. Naama

The Art of Diplomacy: An Interview with Mona Juul

Special thanks to the Drue Heinz Trust for supporting the Lincoln Center Theater Review.

Our deepest appreciation for the support provided to the Lincoln Center Theater Review by the Christopher Lightfoot Walker Literary Fund at Lincoln Center Theater.

Israelis, Palestinians, and Norwegians—struggling with their ambitions and passions, working to

who orchestrated these historic talks, Mona Juul, now the Norwegian ambassador to the United

OSLO

The Rosenthal Family Foundation—Jamie Rosenthal Wolf, David Wolf, Rick Rosenthal, and Nancy Stephens, Directors—is the Lincoln Center Theater Review’s founding and sustaining donor.

one of the most fraught political relationships of our time. At its heart, the play is about people—

history and culture that set the stage for the Oslo Accords. We interviewed one member of the couple

The Love of Desert Lands by Milbry Polk

This edition of the Lincoln Center Theater Review is also supported by the David C. Horn Foundation.

starting Rogers on a road of reading and research that led to the writing of his next play Oslo, about

people—as it does in J. T. Rogers’s illuminating and compelling play. —Alexis Gargagliano

HIERARCHY OF POWER IN THE PLAY Chairman of the P.L.O. Yasser Arafat

Finance Minister of P.L.O. Ahmed Qurie (Abu Ala)

23 P.L.O. Liaison Hassan Asfour

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin Foreign Minister Shimon Peres

Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst

Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin

Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Egeland

Director General of the Foreign Ministry Uri Savir

Official in the Foreign Ministry Mona Juul

Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry Joel Singer

Fafo Institute Director Terje Rød-Larsen

Professor Yair Hirschfeld

Fafo Executive Marianne Heiberg, married to Foreign Minister Holst

Professor Ron Pundak

THE ART OF DIPLOMACY: AN INTERVIEW WITH MONA JUUL The play is based on the experiences of Mona Juul and her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, who orchestrated the Oslo Accords. She spoke to our editors from her post in London, where she is the Norwegian ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Editor: How did the play emerge from your friendship with our director, Bart Sher? Mona Juul: I was serving as the Norwegian diplomat at the U.N., and my husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, who is still based in New York, worked for the U.N. and the International Peace Institute. It turned out that we had our daughters at the same school, and that we were also neighbors. When we started to talk, my husband and I told Bart about our involvement in what came to be known as the Oslo Agreement, which was signed on the White House lawn in 1993 with Clinton, Peres, Rabin, and Arafat. Ed: Did you meet with J. T. Rogers? MJ: We met with J.T. later. He came to Norway to speak with us, and we took him to a few places where we had been facilitating, or hosting, the negotiations. Ed: Is it strange for you to see your work, which was so behind-the-scenes, being portrayed in such a public way? MJ: Absolutely. I have never sought attention (Laughing) on what I’ve been doing, so it is a little strange. When Bart first started talking about making a play about this, I didn’t take him seriously. But I also see that the agreement was historic, and since then it has been impossible to get to the stage where the two sides today are able to agree on anything. So I think it’s also important, in order to restore hope a little in today’s world, to know that it is actually possible to bring two sides that have so much animosity together and help them make compromise. Ed: How did you arrive at the point where Artist Taryn Simon re-created centerpieces from official signings of historic treaties, decrees, and accords that negotiated everything from nuclear armament to oil deals. This image (left) is “Bratislava Declaration. Bratislava, Slovakia, August 3, 1968, Paperwork and the Will of Capital,” 2015.

you were able to bring these two sides to the table? MJ: That is a very long story, because both my own involvement with the Middle East and my husband’s began when I took up my first post as a Norwegian diplomat in Cairo, in 1988. My husband took leave from his work in Norway; he’s a sociologist and was heading a research institute there. Through our contacts and our involvement and our travels there—we went from Egypt to Israel to Gaza to Jerusalem—we saw for ourselves what was going on. This was at the height of the First Intifada, the first Palestinian uprising. When we went to Gaza, we saw young Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, which, most of the time, were met with rubber bullets. It was a very tense situation. While living in Cairo we got to know the brother of Yasser Arafat, Fathi Arafat, who was heading a Palestinian hospital in Cairo. He talked a lot about the effects that the Intifada and the use of violence, and the environment that young people in Gaza and the West Bank were growing up in, would have on the whole generation of young Palestinians. He also talked about the very bad living conditions among the Palestinians in general. My husband had come to Egypt from an institute that specialized in doing studies of living conditions. Maybe, because he had taken leave from his work and didn’t have anything to do (Laughing), he got this crazy idea that he wanted to make a study of living conditions among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. In order to do so, he needed to get the blessings of both sides. He came in contact with a lot of interesting people—Yossi Beilin, who is a character in the play, and others on the Palestinian side. Then we went back to Norway, and I worked with the Norwegian foreign minister. We had people who became envoys for Yasser Arafat, who was then in Tunis, in exile; the P.L.O. was in exile, and came to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry for help setting up contacts with the Israelis in order to see if there was some possibility of having a dialogue. And, to make things even more complicated, the reason the P.L.O. wanted to have that kind of contact was that there

was actually an American-led peace process going on in Washington, which started in Madrid in 1991. The P.L.O. had been excluded because it was considered a terrorist organization by most of the world, and nobody wanted to have the members of this organization integrated in any kind of peace process. But of course they were still the ones pulling the strings and making the decisions. So they wanted to be brought into the game. And that was what we were able to do. This is how Terje and I became the only ones who were able to bring real Israelis and real P.L.O. people together. But the overall condition was that it was a hundred percent secret, because for the Israelis, at the time, it was illegal to meet with P.L.O. people. If what we were doing had been known, the people who made the contact would have been put in prison. The Palestinians as well, of course, had representatives negotiating in Washington, and they didn’t want anybody to know that they were secretly going behind these representatives’ backs and sitting in Oslo negotiating. So the secrecy was maybe the most important feature. We were able to keep it secret for almost a year, with thirteen or fourteen meetings—in Oslo and other places. I think that was very much the key to the success of it. Ed: Could you talk a little about the difference between what you were doing and the negotiations that were taking place in Washington? MJ: They were very different, with a huge delegation, and a lot of media attention. Things were happening in the region, and both sides had to come out and condemn what was going on and attack the other side, then the negotiations would run into problems and they would have to stop. Actually, the original thinking for having these secret back-channel talks in Oslo was to solve some of the problems and then feed the solutions into the official negotiations. But the parties themselves felt that it was actually possible to go a lot further in the back-channel negotiations. They were afraid of folding their negotiations into the

CHRONOLOGY

YOU IN THE WRONG PLACE: DELMAR BOULEVARD EAST, WEST, AND SOUTHWARD By Naa

THE PEACE THAT ENDED PEACE By Raj

THE LOVE OF DESERT LANDS By Milb

THE ART OF NEGOTIATION By Chr

A CUISINE OF COLLABORATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH EINAT ADMONY 5

CHRONOLOGY

YOU IN THE WRONG PLACE: DELMAR BOULEVARD EAST, WEST, AND SOUTHWARD By Naa

THE PEACE THAT ENDED PEACE By Raj

THE LOVE OF DESERT LANDS By Milb

THE ART OF NEGOTIATION By Chr

A CUISINE OF COLLABORATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH EINAT ADMONY 5

Image (left) by Taryn Simon, “Convention on Cluster Munitions. Oslo, Norway, December 3, 2008, Paperwork and the Will of Capital,” 2015.

sat with them, and we told them that we were there only to facilitate—that they were the ones who were going to make an agreement, or see if it was possible to make an agreement. Norway was accepted in that role because we didn’t have any interest of our own at stake. We didn’t take ownership of the negotiations—we couldn’t—and we had no interest in doing that. So the first time the representatives came to Oslo we put them in a room and we said, “We know that you can go on quarrelling about the past. You will never agree on the past. So what we think would be the best thing for you now is to agree to disagree about the past but try to look into the future and see what can you do in order to find a solution to your conflict.” And in order to be able to do that we made sure that there was an atmosphere around those talks where they could relax and feel free from having us listen in. None of us spoke Hebrew or Arabic, which I think was quite an advantage, because they could speak among themselves without us understanding. They felt very comfortable having us around, but we always left them in the room, saying, “Now you start working, and we’re here if you need us, but this is up to you. Whatever you want us to do, please let us know, but it’s about the two of you.” This is how we did it throughout. We were sitting outside the room, making sure that they had what they needed and that there was a good atmosphere. And then, of course, we had social meals. Of course, after every meeting they would disagree over something, and there was always a big crisis. They said, “We will never come back, this is not going to work.” The Israelis went back to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the P.L.O. people went back to Tunis, and they said they would never come back. Then we had to start over again, and carry messages between them, because of course they weren’t talking to each other. They couldn’t. So we were trying to send messages and trying to find a way to bring them back again, or to solve some of the problems in order for them to come back. We worked even more in between the meetings in Oslo. Ed: What was it like being the only woman dealing with these very macho men on both sides? MJ: There was a little sexism; I won’t deny that. But, at the same time, I really felt that

they also had quite a lot of respect for me. Because they knew that, first of all, I represented the Norwegian minister in all this. I was the official representative from Norway, so they were quite dependent on us as a facilitator. I think that they also trusted my judgment. Funnily enough, the Israelis and the Palestinians have exactly the same kind of humor—especially the men, I think. They joked a lot, and they gave my husband quite a hard time. They were always saying this famous quote from the Palestinian negotiator, who told my husband, “You are nothing without your wife.” I really felt that I was there for a purpose, and the men respected that. Besides, I come from a family with four brothers, so I was used to being around men. Ed: You managed to wrangle a rather difficult group? MJ: Absolutely, but I must say that my husband was quite good at that as well. Of course, we became very much the punching bag. They took a lot out on each other, but they also needed a third party to take out all the aggression and frustration on. I mean, being part of such a unique and historic moment is a special thing to experience in life. This kind of diplomacy is also a lot about acting. In the art of diplomacy, you have to play a role, and your own feelings aren’t so important, because you’re so focused on making others comfortable so they can do the right thing. You put yourself on hold a little. It was very tiring. Looking back, I don’t know how we survived it. We were working day and night for them. I mean, we were at their disposal all the time. We were in constant contact, even when they weren’t meeting in Norway. And if they asked us, “Can you come and see us in Paris?,” off we went. I mean, there was nothing else to do. It was a very special period that required special skills. Ed: Since the Oslo Accords, other women have become well known in the diplomatic community. I’m thinking of Samantha Power, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice. Do you feel that women have been able to move up in the diplomatic ranks? MJ: I come from a country where equal rights are very much a priority of our state. We have some of the highest percentages of female participation in the workforce; we have one-

more official one; they were afraid that suddenly all their work would be ruined. Ed: I’m curious about where the line is between when you and your husband started working on this idea and how it became official. MJ: This is also a very long story. My husband worked through his contacts—he had the perfect cover of being a social scientist who was talking to both sides. And I and the deputy foreign minister, Jan Egeland, and also Foreign Minister Holst, of course, were working on it. The plan was backed by the Foreign Ministry, but that was also kind of a secret, so that we had deniability, as we called it. If it became known that these kinds of contacts were going on, we could say, “No, these are just some researchers, some social scientists, who are meeting. This has nothing to do with any kind of official negotiations.” And that’s why the Israelis, in the beginning, or Yossi Beilin, mainly, and Shimon Peres, they also sent two non-officials—I mean, two academicians—Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak, who were affiliated with universities and with the N.G.O.s. They represented the Israelis, but they were not official representatives. That’s why, after a while, the P.L.O. representative, Abu Ala, made an ultimatum and said that if the Israeli delegation wasn’t upgraded to some official Israelis he wouldn’t continue, because he wanted to be sure that they really represented the Israeli government. That’s why the Israelis upgraded them. So we facilitated the talks between the two parties with a small group of Norwegians. It was done under the auspices of that research institute but supported and financed by the Foreign Ministry of Norway. Ed: In the play, much of your work happens offstage? MJ: It’s really important to know that our role as the Norwegian team was to facilitate the talks. I mean, we were making sure that they came to different locations in Norway; we arranged for all the practicalities, made sure that it wouldn’t be known that these representatives were coming, so we had a lot of cover-up operations in order to bring them safely to those places in Norway. This is very important—almost from the very beginning, even the first time they met, we brought them there; we brought them, after a while, into the same room. We then

But the overall condition was that it was a hundred percent secret, because for the Israelis, at the time, it was illegal to meet with P.L.O. people. If what we were doing had been known, the people who made the contact would have been put in prison. year maternity leave, two and a half months’ paternity leave. We have all these arrangements that make it easier for women to have equal footing in the workforce. I see now, living here in England, how far along we are in Norway. This is also true in the Foreign Ministry. Over the years, we have been pushing very hard to promote women diplomats. I have been very fortunate in my career; I think at almost all the posts I’ve had, I have been the first female. So I think there will be more and more women in positions like this. You know, now there is discussion that the next secretary-general of the U.N. should

be a woman. There are quite a few female candidates. I’m also part of a network, created among the Nordic countries, of women mediators and facilitators, because we think it’s extremely important to involve women in these processes, not only as facilitators but also as negotiators. Women represent half the population. All of us have to make sure that the women’s point of view is reflected when there are negotiations and discussions. So I think this is coming, and there will be more and more high-profile women. Ed: Finally, could you tell us the essential things we should know about the Oslo Accords?

MJ: The most important thing is that it was the first-ever agreement between the State of Israel and the P.L.O., the Palestine Liberation Organization, then headed by Yasser Arafat. The Oslo Agreement, as such, is not a full-fledged peace agreement; it was called a Declaration of Principles on how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was the first such agreement between the two countries. Another key thing was that attached to that Oslo Agreement was an agreement called the Mutual Recognition between Israel and the P.L.O., which was also negotiated as part of the Declaration of Principles. That agreement is very historic, because it was the first time that the P.L.O. recognized Israel as a state, and the first time that Israel recognized the P.L.O. as the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. And, in order to make this happen, the Palestinians had to renounce the use of violence, which is something the two sides had been negotiating for years. Another consequence of the agreement was that it opened up the possibility for Jordan to enter into a peace agreement with Israel. I actually spoke with Queen Noor at a recent Lincoln Center Theater opening, and we talked about that. She said that the Oslo Agreement made it possible for King Hussein, her husband, to enter a peace agreement with Israel. Until that point, all the Arab states had said that without an agreement, without solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would be impossible for the Arabs to have an agreement with Israel. Also, the agreement established what later became known as the Palestinian Authority. It made it possible for Yasser Arafat to go from exile in Tunisia to establishing himself in Gaza and, later on, in the West Bank, and, of course, the rest is history. But it was quite a dramatic change from the P.L.O.’s being a terrorist organization that nobody wanted to deal with to having Arafat arrive in Gaza and establish his own authority. And then, of course, they didn’t stop quarreling about what kind of authority that should be. The agreement was signed at the White House, but it was not as if the Palestinian State was there the day after, as we all know. The agreement was that that should be the end goal, but the Oslo Agreement described the way to get there.

Image (left) by Taryn Simon, “Convention on Cluster Munitions. Oslo, Norway, December 3, 2008, Paperwork and the Will of Capital,” 2015.

AN OSLO CHRONOLOGY World events in blue. Play events in bold. 1967 Six-Day War 1982 P.L.O. headquarters relocated to Tunis. 1987-91 First Intifada 1991 Middle East Peace Conference convenes in Madrid. Public bilateral peace talks between Israelis and Arabs continue, after Madrid, in Washington. Representatives from the P.L.O. are not included. 1992 Norwegian academic Terje Rød Larsen makes contact with Yossi Beilin, Labor member of the Israeli Knesset, and protégé of Shimon Peres. They discuss beginning secret Israeli-Palestinian talks in Oslo.

In private meeting with Peres, Rabin authorizes that the secret talks with the P.L.O. in Oslo be upgraded to official level. Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry Uri Savir joins the fourth round of talks in Oslo between Abu Ala and the Israeli professors. Joel Singer, a former lawyer in the Israeli military and now a Washington, D.C.-based attorney, joins Savir in Oslo as negotiations delve into greater detail. Rabin authorizes Singer to draft a new D.O.P.

Larsen, Beilin, and Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini meet in Jerusalem to discuss the possibility of secret talks.

Seventh round of negotiations held in Oslo, with Savir and Singer leading negotiations on the Israeli side.

Labor Party wins the Israeli election. Yitzhak Rabin elected prime minister.

Israel launches week-long bombardment of southern Lebanon known as Operation Accountability. P.L.O. in Tunis is running low on funds.

Rabin’s government assumes power. Shimon Peres named foreign minister. Yossi Beilin is appointed deputy foreign minister. Rabin and Peres remain long-standing rivals. Sixth round of public bilateral peace talks commences in Washington.

While Peres is visiting Stockholm, he conducts a secret midnight negotiation over the phone with Arafat and Abu Ala, who are in Tunis. The Norwegian members of the Oslo team serve as go-betweens for the Israeli negotiators and the P.L.O.

Jan Egeland, Norwegian deputy foreign minister, visits Israel, proposes back-channel Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Israelis, Palestinians, and Norwegians initial the D.O.P. at a secret ceremony in Norway in the middle of the night.

Bill Clinton elected U.S. president.

With two abstentions, Israeli cabinet unanimously approves the D.O.P. with no amendments allowed.

Rabin deports approximately 415 suspected Palestinian militants (mostly from Hamas) to southern Lebanon in response to the killing of eight Israeli troops within a twelve-day period. Secret Oslo talks almost called off. First round of secret talks held in Oslo between Abu Ala and Israeli academics Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak. 1993 Second round of secret talks held in Oslo. The two sides begin drafting a Declaration of Principles (D.O.P.) for an interim Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Third round of secret talks held in Oslo between Abu Ala and the two professors. Both sides continue to draft a D.O.P. Rabin closes Gaza borders after fatal Palestinian stabbings of Israelis.

Foreign Minister Holst obtains signatures of Arafat and Rabin on letters of mutual recognition between Israel and the P.L.O. Rabin and Arafat shake hands at signing ceremony on White House lawn. 1994 Israeli settler kills thirty Palestinians. The P.L.O. suspends all participation in the Oslo Accord. The P.L.O. becomes the Palestinian National Authority. Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East.” 1995 Rabin assassinated by an Israeli settler. 2000-05 Second Intifada 2004 Arafat dies.

Painting by Paula Scher, Israel, 2007. Courtesy of the artist and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

Israeli academic Yair Hirschfeld sent to London by Yossi Beilin. He and P.L.O. Finance Minister Ahmed Qurie (also known as Abu Ala) meet there. They discuss opening a secret channel in Oslo.

Public bilateral peace talks reconvene in Washington after hiatus caused by earlier deportation of Palestinian militants.

Larsen, Beilin, and Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini meet in Jerusalem to discuss the possibility of secret talks.

Seventh round of negotiations held in Oslo, with Savir and Singer leading negotiations on the Israeli side.

Labor Party wins the Israeli election. Yitzhak Rabin elected prime minister.

Israel launches week-long bombardment of southern Lebanon known as Operation Accountability. P.L.O. in Tunis is running low on funds.

Jan Egeland, Norwegian deputy foreign minister, visits Israel, proposes back-channel Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Israelis, Palestinians, and Norwegians initial the D.O.P. at a secret ceremony in Norway in the middle of the night.

Bill Clinton elected U.S. president.

With two abstentions, Israeli cabinet unanimously approves the D.O.P. with no amendments allowed.

Painting by Paula Scher, Israel, 2007. Courtesy of the artist and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

Israeli academic Yair Hirschfeld sent to London by Yossi Beilin. He and P.L.O. Finance Minister Ahmed Qurie (also known as Abu Ala) meet there. They discuss opening a secret channel in Oslo.

Public bilateral peace talks reconvene in Washington after hiatus caused by earlier deportation of Palestinian militants.

YOU IN THE WRONG PLACE By Naama Goldstein

Delmar Boulevard East, West, and Southward (c. 1988-92) In St. Louis on a sunny, mild day, I’m traversing a desolate stretch of a boulevard that spans nine miles. My walk began in the neighboring town of University City, aspiring east to a job interview. The prospect represents a great shift, making use of my new bachelor’s degree toward a step up in the world—work not involving the serving of food or the minding of children. For that reason, I’m dressed against my style; instead of a T-shirt and cords, I’m wearing a short-sleeved sweater and a black razor-pleated skirt, the fabric substantial, draping with gravity and swing. I’ve swapped out my Doc Martens for conservative shoes, stubby heels that I believed I could manage but can’t. I’ve stopped walking and am awaiting a bus. Across the street a man leans against the wall of a convenience store, holding a bottle through a paper bag. The sky dazzles, dwarfing low commercial buildings and brick homes of vintage and gentility, charming except for their dejection, stranded among overgrown lots, some buckling, apertures plugged with plywood. Soon the man resolves to cross over and approaches me to say this: “You in the wrong place.” I have some idea of what he means but, balking, I say, “Why?” With a reluctant air and curious superlatives, he describes parts of my body. “Your spring ass,” he says, and “your big legs,” and adds some reference to my clothes, suggesting that these elements conspire, in that environment, against me. I’m not frightened. Discomfited, yes. His words are intrusive yet irritating in their delicacy, for he is skirting the main issue: not my legs or my ass or my clothing but, rather, my provenance, communicated by my skin, which, pale unlike his, marks me as one who cannot possibly be from this place, and is therefore in the wrong place. He’s way off-base, obviously. I am a great deal more and less misplaced than he can see. I am very new to these parts, having relocated to the town just west of here in recent years from Israel, my family impelled by a conspiracy of vulnerabilities having to do with the effects of combat and the progress of disease, the aftershocks of a tour of duty in Lebanon, the implications of invasive surgery. We are here for respite and follow-up care. Our devotion to our former homeland remains searing, the relocation seen as temporary. In my disorientation, I’ve ventured into adulthood with a clear sense of direction. I encounter this place just as I did my former place, on foot and with a measure of defiance, continuing to go as I was told I shouldn’t. ❖

Photograph by Kathy Ryan, 12:06 p.m., June 12, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Howard Greenberg Gallery.

A few miles west on the same boulevard, say a year earlier, in the neighboring town: an area named the Loop, though it’s a strip, a buzzing mercantile district, winsome with preserved and cultivated character. I’m sitting at a street-side table at a casual eatery, a burrito place, but to me there is nothing casual in an occasion that embodies my exploded world. I’m savoring food that is new to me, eating as I wish rather than as admonished by religion, flouting all kosher codes except those regarding shellfish, for now still too far out. I’m encircled by new friends, none of whom share my background, drawn together by a comparable temperament, a cautious edge, a guarded idealism, and a thirst for hilarity and beer, which this restaurant serves in plastic pitchers on the cheap, and without scrutinizing our ages. I notice the lone patron at a neighboring table. He must bear some connection to the nearby college. He isn’t local. His coloring, his clothes, his grooming combine to signify another origin, as does the courtly way he tips his head to convey engagement when I address him. I anticipate his accent when he answers: Arabic. He welcomes our company, exchanges pleasantries gladly. I inquire into his home turf: Bethlehem. “Then we were neighbors,” I say, speaking nonliterally. My hometown doesn’t border his; he has never heard of it. I try the name of the Arab village that once stood there, worrying that I’ll botch the accent. Sure enough I do, just as it’s foolish of me to expect that he’ll be versed in the full index of his people’s lost places. To have evoked the forfeiture at all was in bad taste, or else no phrase within my ken can salvage this encounter. He is the first Palestinian I’ve ever spoken to. Can I presume that I am his first Israeli? For he lights into the opportunity as if admitted, finally, to the claims department of a loathsome but effectual bureaucracy: “You took our land.” “I did?” “Yes, you.” “Me, personally? This person sitting here.” “You.” Then I must be well over a hundred years old, I could say, to have had a hand in the purchase. A legal acquisition, I could add, of pestilent land, tended by a dwindled population of ghostly serfs, half-blind and yellow with malaria. How miserably we were afflicted, too, at first, how dwindled we became, but then prevailed, improved the soil and survived. My city’s story rolls like footage in my memory, as if I witnessed it, with grief and pride and flickers of omission, the serfs going—where? That’s not addressed. As characters, they’re simply there and then they’re not.

YOU IN THE WRONG PLACE By Naama Goldstein

Photograph by Kathy Ryan, 12:06 p.m., June 12, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Howard Greenberg Gallery.

THE PEACE THAT ENDED PEACE By Raja Shehadeh I don’t get into that. Today the two of us are going nowhere fast, mired in rage and sass and mortified foot-shuffling, the latter by my friends, who will take no side but will effectively wish the scene away, turning inward, draining the beer. The line between the tables is redrawn, the mood at ours killed. We revive it elsewhere. What becomes of the young man from Bethlehem remains his business. ❖ Ducking southward of the boulevard: a pedestrian cut-through, connecting the Loop to the heart of campus, a wooded path divorced from its surroundings in the manner of a nature trail but possessed of its own peculiar character, running along an access road at the rear of homes, overlooking fences, Dumpsters, and garages. The seclusion is interwoven with fellow students. Faces become familiar, nods, names exchanged—a heartening pattern first, then vexing. I have lost my anonymity to expectations of acknowledgment, mainly by men, in which I am illiterate. I’m newly sprung from an education and a way of life concerning itself with a separation of the genders and the preordainment of their roles. Out in the public sphere, I am compelled to coverage and demureness, to serve as dampener of male lusts far wilder than mine. I’ve written off these teachings. They nag anyway, exhorting about signals I couldn’t but drop, invitations I was surely seen to extend, contracts sealed in being congenial and by wearing pants instead of skirts. Now when I pass familiar figures I affect rapt introspection, perceiving disappointment in return, offense, perplexity—or nothing? How should I know? I am taking an anthropology course, an obvious starting point for guidance in the human scene. I focus on the Middle East, embarking from home. Even a survey of the Jews of Israel beyond my sector would be charting territories I had only started to toe, with adolescent stealth, before leaving. This course, anyway, deals with Arabs, toward whom I bear another tenuous relationship, a neighboring experience, separate but felt. I am a bit let down, therefore, when the professor emphasizes distance. She requires an objective language, strictly observational, and I accept the terms, until her zeal for objectivity proves specious. She cossets some groups just to trash another. For we observe the Palestinians, so must look at the Israelis, and to my people she refers by—an obscenity! Colonialists. My blood boils. I brood at her audacity, the sanctimony of her tenured post in a higher institution of a society built by the ruin of others. Still, I am less inclined toward confrontation than to going my own way, though there is a balance I can strike here. The expository paper welcomes argument at a safe distance. I’ll remember little of my paper. I’ll recall the sources. Those the professor has assigned are cheaply bound, like manifestos, skinny, stapled, covers papery, their colors, as I see them, baleful, militant: red, black, white, green. For balance, I produce a salvage from my high-school book collection, mostly left behind, A Zionist Lexicon, thick and hardbound, the dust cover a tribute to our flag and our men’s prayer shawls. I grab my prayer book. The anthropologist won’t alter her position. My paper is slashed with disputations. My sources tickle her with dubiety. The liturgy can’t ring in her with its euphonious bray. The Isaianic expectation that we “gather our scattered from among the nations, and our dispersed from the hindparts of the earth,” doesn’t impress her as compelling, any more than our unscattered part, the Jews fixed all along in our ancestral land, can lead her to the obvious conclusion: that an organ of a body can’t be said to colonize it. There is less at stake in the assignment than I judge, of course. Grade-wise, she credits me befitting my investment: generously. Otherwise, her valuation doesn’t matter. That she classifies our replantation in our land as something other than a blessed miracle cannot reverse the process. Neither can my snapping into a familiar stance—defensive, filial—change the drift of my peregrination. I am away and looking back to where that drift was under way. The compulsory page count has impelled me past the question of nativity. I’ve weighed competing claims, including but not limited to treatment of the land, its dereliction and development. Accounts don’t jibe; photographs clash. The footage rolls in memory. At least the story of my small place on the controversial map manifests plainly, populated first by ghostly characters, plagued by a soil they can’t tame, then by us, draining the swamps in order to prevail. The hour late, the deadline nears, but I can’t wrap the damned thing up. Despite my loyal slant, I’m drawn inexorably another way, toward a troubling gap: the faulty premise upon which this argument is built. Why not just point it out? You don’t decide a people’s privilege to their soil based on your rating of their upkeep. On this narrow point the anthropologist and I agree, leaving me thunderstruck. Of course, it’s lightning that strikes you. Thunder remains distant. I’m alerted, anyway, to something not exactly here or now: the lagging grumble of a changing stance.

THE LOVE OF DESERT LANDS By Milbry Polk THE ART OF NEGOTIATION By Chris Voss Gaza Strip, Rafah Refugee Camp, October 2003.

A CUISINE OF COLLABORATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH EINAT ADMONY

A FEAST FOR PEACE

Naama Goldstein is the author of a short-story collection, The Place Will Comfort You. Born in in the U.S., she was brought up in the city of Petah Tikva, in Israel, and now lives in Boston with her husband and their son. She is at work on a novel.

I began keeping a journal when I was sixteen, with the beginning of the Israeli occupation some fifty years ago. My world had collapsed. It was filled with fear and uncertainty. In the West Bank, where I was living, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War had resulted in few deaths and little destruction of property, but it had shaken all certainties about my present and my future. I wasn’t sure what sort of life would be possible under a military occupation. Keeping a diary helped me keep pace with the tremendous changes under way and avoid being totally bewildered. No less wrenching and confusing was the period after the 1993 signing of the Declaration of Principles between Israel and ByOslo Einat Admony the P.L.O., known colloquially as the Oslo—for the Accords. I’ve searched my journal entries for the period before the signing, which took place on the White House lawn, but find no mention of the Oslo negotiations. This is because these negotiations were carried out under an unprecedented veil of secrecy. Instead, I was following the earlier negotiations taking place in Washington, D.C. These had started in 1991, with great jubilation, after the Madrid Peace Conference was followed by the bilateral negotiations in Washington between a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation and Israel. Like many others, I believed that we were likely to see the end of occupation and the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state next to Israel, and that we were approaching a new era in which Palestinians would be free from land confiscations, restrictions on movement, night raids, and administrative detention. There was also a great sense of pride. It was people’s sacrifice and resistance during the First Intifada, which began at the end of 1987, that had brought Israel to the negotiation table. Back then, I served as legal adviser to the Palestinian delegation. I pursued this work with great enthusiasm. I felt confirmed in my long-held belief that a negotiated settlement was the only path

to peace between Palestinians and Israelis, and that we could look forward to a brighter future in which we would finally have the opportunity to develop our society and live in peace with our neighbors. Unlike the negotiators in Oslo, who were all members of the P.L.O. from outside the Occupied Territories, all the Palestinian delegates in Washington were from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with advisers from the diaspora. After every round of talks, they would report to their compatriots everything that went on there. For three long years, these negotiations proceeded without a word being mentioned to the delegation that a separate avenue of negotiations was being pursued in the Norwegian capital. The delegates were on their way to Washington for another session when the news broke out that a deal had been reached between Israel and the P.L.O. in Oslo. The delegates, external advisers, the head of the delegation—all were as surprised as the rest of the world, and felt terribly betrayed. When the Oslo deal was announced in early September 1993 but before the terms of the agreement were known, I was in the U.K. for the annual Edinburgh International Festival. I remember my excitement when I opened the Guardian and learned that an agreement had been reached. The paper published the text of the Declaration of Principles in its entirety. I began reading the preamble, which was like music to my ears: “The Government of the State of Israel and the P.L.O. team...agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process.”

THE LOVE OF DESERT LANDS By Milbry Polk THE ART OF NEGOTIATION By Chris Voss Gaza Strip, Rafah Refugee Camp, October 2003.

A CUISINE OF COLLABORATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH EINAT ADMONY

A FEAST FOR PEACE

ENDED PEACE By Raja Shehadeh

But everything that followed left me in despair. With my lawyer’s mind, I tried to read through the articles of the Declaration to see how they could possibly be interpreted as serving the interest of the Palestinians. This gave me some hope. But when I reached the last section, the Agreed Minutes, all hope dissipated. Every possible loophole had been closed. As I found out later, this section was primarily the work of the Israeli legal adviser, Joel Singer. It was a fortunate happenstance that I was in Edinburgh and could read the full text of the Declaration; the local Arabic newspaper in the Occupied Territories had published the Declaration minus the Agreed Minutes. Four months after the Declaration was signed, I took part in a conference on the various aspects—legal, political, and economic—of the Oslo Accords in Jerusalem. When I quoted from this section of the Declaration, the Palestinian attendees were surprised and dismayed. They had not heard of the Agreed Minutes. As time passed and more information began to trickle out about the negotiations in Oslo, we were shocked to learn that the Palestinian delegation did not employ the services of a legal adviser until the last minute, at which point an Egyptian lawyer, Taher Shash, was flown in from Cairo. He was shown a draft the night before the signing but said that he couldn’t possibly offer his advice so quickly. The next day, the signing took place. At the airport, on my way back to Ramallah from the U.K., I met Dr. Mamdouh Aker, one of the delegates returning from D.C. “Are you not attending the signing ceremony?” I asked. “Not at all,” he answered. “I am shocked and dismayed by the Declaration and will not allow myself to be part of it.” “What about Haidar Abdul-Shafi, the head of the delegation?” I asked. “Will he be attending?” “He’s gone home,” Mamdouh answered. There was a different reaction among many of the young activists who had participated in the First Intifada, the largely nonviolent resistance in which Palestinians, determined to bring an end to the Israeli occupation, used stones and commercial strikes to drive the soldiers out. One young man told a TV interviewer,“Yikhribit el Hijara” (“Goddamn stones”), “we want peace.” On October 31st, a month and a half after the Oslo was signed, I reported to my journal: “Anger freezes, indignation freezes, self-righteousness freezes, self-indulgence in pain and regret freezes. I don’t want to be frozen.” I went on: At times I cannot help myself. I burst off into a monologue in which I rave at the stupidity of our leaders. Anyone observing what the Israelis are doing could have anticipated what they were up to, simply re-packaging rather than ending the occupation. Yesterday I saw a photograph of Hassan Asfour sitting with General Amnon Lipkin-Shahak [the deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army] smiling as though he was with a great lost friend. There is no dignity, nor self-respect. But worst of all no likelihood that any aspect of our future will be determined by us, because our leaders don’t have what it takes. The next day, a taxi driver with whom I was riding shared my despair and, looking around, said, “Nothing has changed.” The Palestinian delegation was composed of Palestinians from

the Occupied Territories who were not formal members of the P.L.O. but whom the organization had approved. What I could not understand was how the P.L.O. leadership in Tunis, where the organization had established its headquarters after it was driven out of Lebanon in 1982, could sign the Declaration when it lacked the stipulation that all settlement activities were to cease—and after having insisted to the D.C. delegation that there could be no peace agreement without such a condition. Only later did it become clear that the P.L.O. feared that, with the growing popularity and the high profile of such members as Hanan Ashrawi, the spokesperson of the delegation, and Haidar Abdul-Shafi, the head of the delegation, a local leadership might gain recognition and take control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip while the Tunis leadership, deemed “rejectionist,” was sidestepped. The Israeli negotiators understood this very well and exploited it to the full by extracting shameful concessions from the P.L.O. leadership. Today, thirty-five years later, little has changed. The occupation has remained in place and the conflict has become ever more entrenched. With more than double the number of settlers we had in the West Bank at the time of the Oslo negotiations, the viability of the two-state solution—a Palestinian state alongside Israel—has become questionable. Euphoric from the Israelis’ victory in the 1967 War, Moshe Dayan, Israel’s prime minister of defense, declared that Israel was now an empire. It seemed that, even after twenty years, this conviction had remained unshaken. The Israelis’ arrogance pervaded the negotiations in the Norwegian capital. Instead of meeting the Palestinians halfway in negotiating a peace settlement, the Israelis imposed a document of surrender. But, in doing so, the Israeli negotiators and their legal advisers failed to realize that what their country and their people needed most was peace with its neighbors. The Oslo agreement they helped negotiate never achieved this. Perhaps the worst consequence of the Oslo Accord was that it made the Palestinians ever more skeptical that negotiations with Israel could lead to peace. It gave negotiations a bad name. It also led the Israelis to believe that they could outsmart the Palestinians and win a total victory over them. You only respect an enemy that stands up and challenges your tactics. After the Oslo Accord, the Israelis could live with the false illusion of having ultimately defeated the Palestinians, leading Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to declare, “At the end, in the State of Israel, as I see it, there will be a fence that spans it all. I’ll be told, ‘This is what you want, to protect the villa?’ The answer is yes. Will we surround all of the State of Israel with fences and barriers? The answer is yes. In the area that we live in, we must defend ourselves against the wild beasts.”

THE LOVE OF DESERT LANDS By Milbry Polk “I had a well-spent morning at the office making out the southern desert

THE ART OF NEGOTIATION By Chris Voss

frontier of the Iraq.”

Raja Shehadeh is the author of the highly acclaimed Palestinian Walks, A Rift in Time, Strangers in the House, and When the Birds Stopped Singing. A Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah, he is a founder of the pioneering human-rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists.

point for her. Already facile in languages, speaking French, German, and Italian, she now added Farsi. The publication of her

Scholar, mountaineer, photographer, writer, museum founder,

first books, Persian Pictures and The Garden of Heaven, a translation

archaeologist, Arabist, explorer, linguist, poet, spy are all words

of the poems of the medieval Persian poet Hafiz, marked the

that describe Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell. But it is as a dip-

beginning of her long association with the Levant. Before Bell re-

lomat in the difficult years during and after World War I, when

turned to the Middle East, she traveled around the world twice,

the Ottoman Empire was broken up and the British government

staying with diplomats and other influential friends of her par-

established its mandate in Mesopotamia, that Bell came into

ents. She also became a noted mountaineer, making several first

her own. Serving as the Oriental secretary in Baghdad, she was

summits in the Alps, where she learned to live rough—an ability

A CUISINE OF COLLABORATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH EINAT ADMONY

Ramallah, April 2016

then the British ambassador in Tehran. This trip was a turning

recognized as one of the most powerful women in the British

that would stand her in good stead on later desert expeditions.

Empire. She was a friend to kings, nomads, and celebrities, in-

Bell followed in the footsteps of a handful of earlier English-

cluding T. E. Lawrence (the inspiration for the movie Lawrence of

women who fell in love with and wrote about the desert lands

Arabia), who had helped organize the Arab Revolt against the Ot-

and their peoples, among them Lady Anne Blunt, Freya Stark,

toman Turks. She was a kingmaker, putting her friend Faisal on

Isabel Burton, and Jane Digby. Traveling alone was never easy.

the throne of Iraq and advising him on matters of governance.

But when faced with a challenge these women were equal to

She has been called the Mother of Iraq because of her, now con-

it. Bell declared once, having been told that travel in a region

troversial, work drawing the borders of the country. The issues

was too dangerous, “British women are never afraid.” And she

A FEAST FOR PEACE By Einat Admony

Bell dealt with while “nation building” in Iraq would eerily be

went ahead. Freya Stark, an inveterate and witty traveler, once

repeated nearly a century later in the American debacle. In a

remarked, “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the

time and world where women did not hold positions of power

pleasantest sensations in the world.” I shared Bell’s feelings for

and could not travel freely, Gertrude Bell did both.

the desert when she wrote of Arabia, “What a world! The incred-

When I first read Bell’s book The Desert and the Sown, as a

ible desolation…I think no one can travel here and come back

teenager, I could see from the roof of my mud-brick house the

the same. It sets its seal upon you for good or ill.” It is important

tents of the Egyptian Bedouin camped among the nearby fig

for all of us to face the world with an open mind, to learn all we

trees. I was mesmerized by the story of a woman from north-

can about what is there and come to terms with our own fears

ern England who had so completely embraced a foreign culture

in order to embrace difference.

and found a place on earth that spoke to her as no other place

Bell realized that if she was going to spend more time in the

did. I began to read about other women who journeyed far from

Middle East she had to learn Arabic, so in 1899 she went to Jeru-

home and made important discoveries about the world as a re-

salem, which was then under the control of the Ottoman Turks.

sult. Eventually I would write a book, Women of Discovery, about

When she wasn’t studying she traveled throughout Syria, spend-

women who often served as bridges between disparate worlds,

ing some time with the Druze, an unusual ethnic group whose

as Bell did. And, like Bell, I, too, would make journeys throughout

teachings are a blend of Islamic, Christian, Hindu, Judaic, and

the Middle East, finding inspiration in life in the desert.

other religious beliefs, and visiting with nomads and sheikhs,

Gertrude Bell was born in 1874 to a wealthy English family

staying in tents and palaces. She became interested in archaeol-

of industrialists and political leaders. Her grandfather Sir Isaac

ogy and made important discoveries, notably the ruined palace

Lowthian Bell owned iron factories and was a Liberal member

of Ukhaidir. Her forays into Turkey, Syria, and Mesopotamia laid

of Parliament. Her father, Sir Hugh, was a mayor, a justice of

the groundwork for her later political work. Forging a network

the peace, and lord lieutenant of the North Riding in Yorkshire.

of relationships with Bedouin tribes throughout Mesopotamia

Bell, like most girls of her class, was tutored at home. But rather

would become a vital asset.

than focus on making a good marriage, as most girls did then,

In 1913, Bell set out on a dangerous expedition bound for the

she persuaded her parents to let her attend college. At the age

interior of Arabia. Her goal was to meet the two rival sheikhs—

of seventeen, she won one of the few spots reserved for women

Ibn Rashid, in the remote desert fortress of Hail, and Ibn Saud,

at Oxford University, where she achieved a first in history in just

in Riyadh—who had been battling for control of Arabia for years.

two years. In 1892, when she was twenty-three, she accepted

She had seventeen camels laden with gifts for all whom she en-

an invitation to journey to Persia to visit her uncle, who was 15