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The Oslo Diaries (2017)
Directors: Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan
Producer: Hilla Medalia, Ina Fichman
Co- Producer: Daniel Sivan, Mor Loushy, Kristian Mosvold
Executive Producers: Guy Lavie, Koby Gal Raday, Danna Stem, Dagmar
Mielke, Barbara Dobkin, Jean Tsien
Country: Israel, Canada
Language: English, Hebrew, Arabic
On the last day of the 2018 Jerusalem Film Festival I saw The Oslo Diaries, which tells the "story" of the negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian delegations which led to the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel on one hand, and the Israeli recognition of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people on the other. The hope was that the so-called "Oslo Process," which started with secret meetings outside the Norwegian capital in January 1993, would bring an end to the Israeli occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The Loushy/Sivan film presents a sophisticated montage of the "diaries" of the major participants in this process, read in voice-over (by actors, I assume), in combination with retrospective interviews, mainly with the Israelis who had been directly involved, including the last recorded interview with Shimon Peres. Some of these "diary entries" are no doubt reconstructions, with the aim of reflecting on the development of the process in "real time."
While the introspective texts (diaries and interviews) present the more hidden aspects of this process, the film also presents well-known footage from the signing of "Oslo I" on the White House Lawn on Sept. 13, 1993, with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shaking hands and signing the agreement which was supposed to lead to the resolution of the conflict between the two peoples; also footage of what became known as "Oslo II," the agreement which led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, implementing the first step toward Palestinian self-government, is included. We are also shown how the forces of opposition led by Binyamin Netanyahu on the Israeli side and Hamas on the Palestinian side, generate...