This is exactly right. The Arabs of Palestine do not share a collective history, so they do not have much vision for the future as a 'nation'. That is one reason why they are currently turning on themselves. There is an opportunity for them to unite, but that opportunity has brought along dozens of opportunists like Arafat and others who seek to exploit it for personal gain, which only reinforces the divisions.
The Arabs of Palestine are like most other Arabs, they are tribal and relate to their clans. They have not been very nationalistic, and only a few who understood the power of nationalism were able to strike deals with the west to take control. It takes a form of fascism to unite them, like the Ba'athists in Iraq and Syria, the fascism of Nasser in Egypt, or the religious fascism of the Saudi Wahabbis - and indeed the patriarchal family clan structure is a form of fascism in itself.
But in the WB the powerful families who control loyalties like the Husseinis, Nashashibis, etc have not surrendered their loyalties to the Arafat's PLO. Add to this mix the hardline fundamentalists like Hamas, Al-Aqsa, Hezbullah, and the other clans and gangs and platoons of security services (who, I should add, are often recruited from the powerful families in a deal made with the PLO leader) you have no easy way to enact positive change on the peace front. Every small time thug, family elder, clan leader, etc wishes to protect his interests.
From a 19th-Century History of Palestine as written by a Palestinian, Rabbi Joseph Schwarz, living in Jerusalem in 1850:
There are nowhere to be met with regular documents in respect to its history, states, and towns; the past seems to have been entirely forgotten; so that the whole country cared, so to say, only for the present, and took no cognizance of what had prededed or was to follow. It is true that some few Arabic historians have written something concerning Palestine, such as Abulfeda and Serif ibn Idrus; but their works have almost entirely disappeared, as was to be supposed would be the case under a government which had not and suffered not a free press. It was only with the greatest trouble that I could obtain here and there an historical document, and I extracted therefrom only what interested me, that is, what has reference to the Israelitish people, but not the general and to us indifferent accounts and narratives. Reports referring to modern times, I obtained occasionally by way of tradition. Therefore it cannot excite surprise that the historical portion of my book should be so brief and simple.