JERUSALEM (RNS) Eyal Naveh is rewriting the history of the Holy Land, two pages at a time.

Naveh, a professor at Tel Aviv University, is about to launch the English-language version of a history book that he believes has the power to help quell the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians.

All he needs now is a school that’s willing to buy it.

“Within the conflict, the history often serves as a weapon,” said Naveh, who also heads the Political Education Project within the Israel Democracy Institute. “(The new text book) gives each side their own meaningful narrative … it compromises and legitimizes.”

It’s a project that’s been 10 years in the making. His original goal was a textbook with a narrative that both sides could accept. Long debates with Palestinian and Israeli history teachers quickly showed him that was impossible.

The teachers couldn’t even agree upon the names for the chapters (the War of Independence, as the Israelis wanted, or An-Nakbeh, the Palestinians’ Arabic term for “Catastrophe,” that gave birth to the modern state of Israel in 1948). They were split on how to refer to themselves in the book (Arabs of Israel, Arab-Israelis or Palestinians), and whether to include Israeli and Palestinian flags on the corresponding pages.

Since one agreed-upon narrative seemed impossible, Naveh opted for a side-by-side version that allowed both sides their own perspective.

The result is “Learning Each Other’s Historical Narrative: Palestinians and Israelis.” Chapters include the Balfour Declaration (the 1917 British declaration that said Jews deserved their own homeland in Palestine), the 1948 War and the 1987 Palestinian Intifada, or uprising against Israel.

Each side’s perspective is told across two facing pages; On the left side is the Israeli perspective, on the right is the Palestinian.

The format and content are groundbreaking because Israeli history textbooks generally don’t include the Palestinian narrative — even though Palestinians comprise nearly 20 percent of Israeli society.

“The An-Nakbeh isn’t in the books, according to the Jews,” said Haneen Zouabi, a member of the Palestinian parliament. “They only recognize Jewish/Israeli culture.”

In Naveh’s dual narrative history book, the Israel’s 1948 War of Independence is right next to An-Nakbeh. On the Israeli side, the text explains how the Holocaust and World War II propelled European Jews to immigrate to the land of their ancestors. On the Palestinian side, students read how Arabs were driven from their homes to make room for the Jews.

On their own, both narratives could be seen as inflammatory to the other side. However, when read together, Naveh hopes the history will lead to new conversations. “Acknowledgement is the first step of dialogue,” he said.

Naveh employed two Palestinians and two Jewish history teachers to write their own narratives, purposefully leaving out extremists on either side.

“We cut the edges. If you put the Jewish settlers or Hamas in the narratives, it’s not moderate any more,” explained Naveh.

The two sets of teachers then met together to discuss what to include. But even the meeting place had the potential to be a deal-breaker. Naveh originally set up a meeting in Jerusalem. To get to the site, however, the Palestinians had to cross six Israeli check-points. By the time they made it to the city, Naveh says the teachers were not in a good mood. A location closer to them in the West Bank wasn’t possible because of political instability.

Eventually, Naveh had to move the meetings out of the country to create a balanced atmosphere.

Once together, the teachers combed through each other’s narratives and suggested improvements, though one side could not impose a change on the other. With each discussion, Naveh says the narratives become more moderate and more acceptable to both sides.

“As a Jew, I don’t necessarily agree with the Palestinian narrative, however I do accept it and recognize their story,” said Naveh.

Once the text book was complete, Naveh then confronted Israel’s educational bureaucracy. He quietly distributed the book in high schools outside of Tel Aviv. The response from students and teachers was positive, he said. But when Israeli government officials caught wind of the book, the teachers were ordered to remove it from the classroom.

His Palestinian counterparts were no more successful, Naveh said. Arab leaders used threats to get the book out of classrooms and now, the book is primarily being used by colleges and universities, as well as in extracurricular programs, he said.

Once the upcoming English-language version is published, Naveh hopes the book will be used by Palestinian and Jewish students all over the world.

“People,” Naveh said, “are afraid acknowledgement will threaten their very existence.”