Speaking to The Jerusalem Post immediately after a 90-minute meeting with Fayyad in Ramallah, their first meeting, Dershowitz said Fayyad “genuinely would like to bring peace and a two-state solution, based on his conception of what a two-state solution would look like.”

This, he stressed, was “very different” from Israel’s conception, in matters relating to security, among others. But overall, said Dershowitz, Fayyad’s differences with Israel fell into the realm of “reasonable disagreement.”

“I didn’t hear a single argument that seemed unreasonable,” said Dershowitz, adding, “The same goes for my recent meetings with Israeli leaders.”

Thus, he said, “you have reasonable people [on both sides] disagreeing over reasonable issues.

“Whether that gulf can be bridged is a hard question,” he said. “But we’re in the realm of reasonable disagreement, and that’s a big step forward.”

It was very different from the Arafat era, he said, to encounter “reason and civil disobedience” on the Palestinian side, compared to the previous “unreason and terror.”

Nonetheless, he stressed that his glowing assessment of Fayyad did not necessarily encompass the PA leadership as a whole.