He graduated from the Leyada and served his compulsory military service in a Nahal unit near the Israeli–Lebanese border at Kibbutz Gesher HaZiv.
In the early 1950s, following his discharge, Benvenisti moved to the nearby Kibbutz Rosh Hanikra and served as a youth movement leader.
He later obtained a doctorate from Harvard University's Kennedy School for his work on conflict management in Jerusalem and in Belfast.
[5] Since 1992 he devoted his time to teaching as visiting lecturer (at Ben-Gurion University in 1994–1998, and Johns Hopkins SAIS, Washington DC, in 1982–2009), research and writing on Jerusalem, the Northern Ireland conflict, Israeli–Palestinian relations, Palestinian vanished landscape, bi-nationalism and restaurant reviews.
[3][4] Benvenisti was a critic of Israel's policies towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and was an advocate of the idea of a binational state.
[8] His experience led him in later years to be disillusioned with Zionism, stating in an interview with Ari Shavit: I went to Kibbutz Hanikra in the 1950s and experienced the transcendent feeling of working in the banana groves without noticing that in order to plant the banana trees, I was uprooting olive trees, thousands of years old, of a Palestinian village.