Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

by Ian Black

Overview

From a long-time Guardian correspondent and editor, an expansive, authoritative, and balanced account of over a century of violent confrontation, war, and occupation in Palestine and Israel, published on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War

In Enemies and Neighbors, Ian Black, who has spent over three decades covering events in the Middle East and is currently a fellow at the London School of Economics, offers a major new history of the Arab-Zionist conflict from 1917 to today, published on the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.

Laying the historical groundwork in the final decades of the Ottoman Era, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in the Holy Land, Black draws on a wide range of sources—from declassified documents to oral histories to his own vivid on-the-ground reporting—to recreate the major milestones in the most polarizing conflict of the modern age from both sides. In the third year of World War I, the seed was planted for an inevitable clash: Jerusalem Governor Izzat Pasha surrendered to British troops and Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour issued a fateful document sympathizing with the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people.” The chronicle takes us through the Arab rebellion of the 1930s; the long shadow of the Nazi Holocaust; the war of 1948—culminating in Israel’s independence and the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe); the “cursed victory” of the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Palestinian re-awakening; the first and second Intifadas; the Oslo Accords; and other failed peace negotiations and continued violence up to 2017.

Combining engaging narrative with historical and political analysis and cultural insights, Enemies and Neighbors is both an accessible overview and a fascinating investigation into the deeper truths of a history that continues to dominate Middle Eastern politics and diplomacy—one which has preserved Palestinians and Israelis as unequal enemies and neighbors, their conflict unresolved as prospects for a two-state solution have all but disappeared.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802127037
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	11/07/2017
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 2.10(d)

About the Author

Ian Black joined the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics as Visiting Senior Fellow in August 2016. He has been the Middle East editor, diplomatic editor, and European editor for the Guardian. He has also written for the Economist and the Washington Post, among other publications, and is a regular commentator on TV and radio on Middle Eastern and international affairs. He coauthored Israel’s Secret Wars; wrote the introduction to The Arab Spring: Revolution, Rebellion and a New World Order; and contributed to the Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. He has an MA in history and political science from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in government from LSE. He lives in London.

Read an Excerpt

The 67 typewritten words of the Balfour Declaration combined considerations of imperial planning, wartime propaganda, biblical resonances, a colonial mindset—as well as evident sympathy for the Zionist idea. With them, as Arthur Koestler was to quip memorably—neatly encapsulating the attendant and continuing controversy—“one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.” Lloyd George highlighted sympathy for the Jews as his principal motivation. But the decisive calculations were political, primarily the wish to outsmart the French in post-war arrangements in the Levant and the impulse to use Palestine's strategic location—its “fatal geography”—to protect Egypt, the Suez Canal and the route to India. Other judgements have placed greater emphasis on the need to mobilise Jewish public opinion behind the then flagging Allied war effort. As Balfour told the war cabinet at its decisive meeting on October 31: “If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal [Zionism], we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and in America.” Historians have spent decades debating the connections and contradictions between Balfour's public pledge to the Zionists, the secret 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain, France and Russia about post-war spheres of influence in the Middle East, and pledges about Arab independence made by the British in 1915 to encourage Sharif Hussein of Mecca to launch his “revolt in the desert” against the Turks.

The truth, buried in imprecise definitions, misunderstandings and duplicity, remains elusive. The consequences of the declaration are still being played out.

Editorial Reviews

[Enemies and Neighbors is] a good read. Black…has a gift for summary. He synopsizes events in sharp, fast paragraphs filled with vivid detail. And by largely avoiding the international politics of the conflict, he keeps a tight focus on events on the ground…Black also shows how certain dynamics recurred again and again across the decades…He savors moments when the ideological mask lifts, and Jews and Palestinians see each other not merely as threats, but also as human beings.

The New York Times Book Review - Peter Beinart

Praise for Israel’s Secret Wars:

“[Black and Morris] are the most serious and comprehensive chroniclers of Israeli intelligence to date.”—New York Times Book Review

“A thorough, coherent history . . . well written and exceptionally well researched.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Chock full of interesting material.”—Newsday

“This may just turn out to be the definitive work on the Jewish state’s highly touted and often emulated intelligence operations.”—Library Journal

“Extensively documented and detailed . . . edifying and fascinating.”—Booklist

From the Publisher

11/01/2017
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a long history, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration that created the original framework for the current struggle. Readers are in dire need of a guide to the complex struggle; now we have one with Black's (coauthor, Israel's Secret Wars) exceptional history of the chronic turmoil that characterized the region in the 20th century. The author narrates the past 100 years of conflict, offering insight into major players such as Palestinian political leader Yasser Arafat; former Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, and Ariel Sharon; and current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among many others. Black goes beyond the ongoing political dialog to peer into the everyday life of average Israeli and Palestinian citizens who struggle to make ends meet in this hostile environment. Black's assessment is a valuable work for anyone interested in trying to untangle the complexities of this ceaseless struggle. VERDICT Based on extensive secondary sources, this history is a valuable contribution to an already expansive body of literature on the subject and essential for all collections.—Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames

Library Journal

2017-09-19
An astute, evenhanded study on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration (1917) that rehashes the history of the Palestinian-Jewish divide.Basing his book on "a synthesis of existing scholarship and secondary sources," English historian and former Guardian European editor Black (co-author: Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services, 1991) patiently examines the 100-year struggle between the Jews' dominant narrative of a land "redeemed" and the Palestinian sense of dispossession—both valid, nearly irreconcilable views. The year 1917 brought the fateful British document that would have a seismic, lasting impact on the Holy Land, and indeed the world, in the form of 67 typewritten words that "combined considerations of imperial planning, wartime propaganda, biblical resonances, and a colonial mindset, as well as evident sympathy for the Zionist idea." While promising favor with "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," the Balfour Declaration also stipulated that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine"—e.g., the 600,000 Arabs living there. This was the beginning of a history of disfiguring segregation, misrepresentation, and violence. The author moves chronologically over the milestones of the decades, from the Jewish claim of the land and disparagement of the Arabs as "backward" to Palestinian resentment, splintering, and reprisals. It is a familiar story, but Black tells it cogently and evenly. He also considers the repeated attempts at real peace, continually undercut by violence, such as the Oslo Accords, which were sabotaged by Baruch Goldstein's massacre at Hebron in February 1994. The two intifadas by the Palestinians focused attention on the unconscionable conditions of the oppressed, occupied people, yet there is scant consensus about whether there should be a two-state or a binational state solution. In his epilogue, Black pessimistically considers the options.A lucid, fair-minded primer for the new generation of leaders.

Kirkus Reviews