Commentators versus the academic

I was incensed to read Stephen Cohen's opinion piece on achieving peace in the Miidle East.
"MANY WHO believed in the feasibility of achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace have concluded that it is no longer a realistic hope, at least in the first term of the Obama presidency.
They are largely disillusioned by Israel’s dogged insistence on expanding settlements, even though Israel well knows that it angers Palestinians."
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/01/08/take_a_tip_from_eisenhower_truman_on_the_mideast/

You can read the whole article and find that nowhere are the Palestinians to blame for the failure.
Israel Matzav reported that Abbas sponsored "a ceremony celebrating the 50th birthday of Dalal Mughrabi, the terrorist who directed the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, the worst terrorist attack in the country's history, where gunmen hijacked a bus and murdered 37 people, including 10 children. Mughrabi was killed during the attack.
On her recent birthday, the governor of Ramallah named a town square after her."
But Palestinian incitement and the firing of rockets into Israel is not a reason for the failure of peace. No, according to Mr. Cohen, the solution to advance the peace talks is the following:
"Since nuclear nonproliferation is an Obama priority, he should make it clear to Israel that America’s protection of Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity’’ will be difficult to maintain if Israel has not reached out to make peace on his watch."
There are 130 comments posted regarding the Boston Globe article.
Vinyid wrote, "By focusing on Israeli settlements as the major obstacle, Cohen obscures what is (and always has been) the real reason peace between Israelis and Palestinians is impossible to achieve: Both Fatah and Hamas refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, regardless of Jerusalem's status, Israel's borders or the presence or absence of "settlements." The truth can be found in the Hamas and Fatah charters, both of which call for the destruction of Israel and for it to be replaced with an Arab state of Palestine. If the Palestinians are serious about the two-state solution, one Arab and one Jewish, living side-by-side in peace, let them show it by first changing their charters."

A comment by Smart Momma included the following:
....The main obstacle to peace is the Arab's hatred for Jews and their fixation on destroying Israel above all else. Nothing will satisfy them short of eliminating the Jewish homeland and destroying all traces of Jewish existence. This is no secret; they have said this time and time again. How is it that a so-called 'academic' fails to listen to the most basic facts and imposes his own standards and perceptions in preference to what the Arabs continually tell him?
....And G-d save us from 'academics' whose ivory-tower existence has robbed them of all rational thought.