‘No Common Ground’: Joseph Massad and Benny Morris Discuss the Middle East

Abstract

If there has been little purposeful dialogue in recent years between Israeli and Palestinian political leaders, the extent of intellectual exchange across one of the world's most pronounced diplomatic fault lines has also been conspicuously modest. The two traditions are not on talking terms. 'The most demoralising aspect of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict', according to the Palestinian academic and writer, Edward Said, 'is the almost total opposition between mainstream Israeli and Palestinian points of view.... There is simply no common ground, no common narrative, no possible area for genuine reconciliation'. In that same article in the London Review of Books (14 December 2000), Edward Said suggested that respected Palestinian and Israeli historians and intellectuals should hold a series of meetings 'to try to agree a modicum of truth about this conflict ... which in turn might reveal a way out of the present impasse'. Not a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at least not yet, but perhaps something along the lines of a 'Historical Truth and Political Justice Committee'. The obvious way of examining the potential of Edward Said's proposal is to engage prominent Palestinian and Israeli academics in discussion. That's what History Workshop Journal has done. Joseph Massad is a colleague of Edward Said at Columbia University in New York, where he is Assistant Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History. His most recent publication is Colonial Effects: the Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York, 2001). He was in Amman at the time this discussion was recorded in July 2001. Benny Morris is, with Avi Shlaim, perhaps the most prominent practitioner of what has been called the 'new' or 'revisionist' school of Israeli history, and is the author of Righteous Victims: a History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 (London, 2000). He is Professor of History at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. He took part in the discussion from Dartmouth College in New England, where he was a visiting professor. Professor Massad and Professor Morris had never met prior to this conversation. Both participants have had the opportunity to revise and correct their contributions. I moderated the discussion from London on a conference phone call. Andrew Whitehead