Benny Morris is at it again, blaming the difficulty of securing a conflict ending peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians entirely on the attitude of the Palestinians. Over the weekend, he wrote the following gem in the Guardian: “The major problem is that the two-headed Palestinian national movement is averse to sharing Palestine with the Jews and endorsing a solution based on two states for two peoples.” This is essentially a summary of his latest book, “One State, Two States” (Yale University Press, 2009), which is one of the worst books I have read in a long time on this or any other subject. Morris may be a fine historian, but his political attitudes are so ethnocentric and aggressively bigoted that his analysis often boils down to little more than racism directed against Palestinians and other Arabs. The idea that one may be a fine historian and a complete fanatic shouldn’t surprise anybody. There are many such individuals, for example David Irving. And Benny Morris.

The crux of Morris’s argument in both his book and his op-ed is that no element of the Palestinian national movement, specifically not the PLO and Fatah, have ever recognized the principle of two states or to the legitimacy of Israel. And the biggest problem for his argument is that this is simply not true. For example, Morris must have been sleeping through the recent Fatah Sixth Party General Congress, at which almost everything was the subject of contentious debate except two issues: the leadership of President Abbas and the national strategy of seeking a negotiated two-state agreement with Israel. It wasn’t debated because this strategy has become the accepted strategic decision for the mainstream nationalist Palestinian movement since the late 1980s. The evidence that the PLO and the Palestinian Authority both accept the principle of a two state agreement, and have recognized and entered into binding treaty agreements with the state of Israel is beyond serious question. Contrast this with the tooth pulling required to get Prime Minister Netanyahu to agree in principle to a two state arrangement at the beginning of his new term in office. Simply put, the most essential element of Morris’ argument is demonstrably and obviously false.

On the other hand, when it comes to the psychology behind the conflict, he may have a point, although it certainly applies as least as much to Israelis as it does to Palestinians. I do think there is an element of truth in the notion that for many people on both sides of the conflict, there is a deep-seated unwillingness, in their heart of hearts, to fully accept the legitimacy of the other’s national narrative and national rights. Some of these people simply reject the idea of the national rights of the other community, as with Israel’s extremist Infrastructure Minister, Uzi Landau, who recently declared regarding the occupied territories, "This land is ours and ours alone." He had the almighty gall to add, "It is the Arabs who are occupiers." Reading Morris’s account, one would never know that this sentiment, to one extent or another, is very common among Jewish Israelis.

And, no doubt, there are many Palestinians who feel similarly that the only legitimate national entity and movement in mandatory Palestine is the Arab one. Hamas certainly does, but with the added twist that its nationalism is explicitly Islamic as well as Arab. Most versions of the one-state agenda at best seem to offer the terms of the French emancipation in the words of Clermont-Tonnere: “to the Jew as an individual everything; to the Jews as a nation nothing.” And, in truth, the Palestinian citizens of Israel as individuals have been allowed much less than everything, and the Palestinians have, as a nation, been allowed nothing.

Looking for evidence that the other side in this conflict does not fundamentally embrace at a core level the legitimacy of one’s own nationalism and narrative is extremely easy to do, and both Palestinians and Israelis can find a plethora of evidence to bolster these doubts. It’s impossible to know the deepest sentiments of most Palestinians and Israelis, but it would be surprising and, perhaps, odd if they were able, at a core emotional level and that this stage in their mutal history, to reconcile their own nationalist sentiments with the full, unqualified legitimacy of nationalist sentiments on the other side. However, that doesn’t mean that a peace agreement is impossible, as Morris wrongly concludes. Interests can trump sentiments, and a peace agreement is strongly in both the Palestinian and Israeli national interest.

One of the most significant arguments in favor of a two-state peace agreement is precisely that it does not require the reconciliation and harmonization, or even the direct coexistence, of the Israeli and Palestinian national narratives. These narratives would, under such circumstances, transition from direct armed conflict into diplomatic relations between two states, with minorities on one or possibly both sides. There are many examples around the world of states whose founding national narratives are directly contradictory to each other, and who nonetheless are able to maintain working diplomatic relations and avoid ongoing conflict. To shift from a relationship entirely defined by occupation, repression and violence to a possibly resentful but workable peace would be a major accomplishment for both peoples. It is absurd for Morris or anyone else to argue that resistance to two states is largely or even mainly on the Palestinian side when in the past few weeks we had the competing spectacles of the Fatah Congress on the one hand and numerous extremist and exclusivist Israeli statements, many from Cabinet ministers, regarding settlements and occupation on the other hand.

It is entirely possible that, as so many other peoples have done in the past, Israelis and Palestinians could enter into a mutually acceptable and mutually necessary peace agreement without either enthusiasm for its terms or modification of their own sense of the trajectory of history. People like Morris who hold that Palestinians will not be ready for peace until they abandon their national narrative or become ardent Zionists, and Palestinians who hold that as long as Israelis are Zionists at all, that one side or the other will never be ready for peace, are wrong. Peace, or rather a conflict ending agreement, will and should be based on interests and needs, rather than sentiments and narratives. Both peoples will have to overcome their emotions and sentiments in order to make the necessary compromises. But neither of them can afford not to do so.