Enemies and Neighbors

Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

By: Ian Black

Narrated by: Michael Page

Length: 20 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

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. 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 Arthur 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.

©2017 Ian Black (P)2018 Tantor

Sweeping historical perspective

Broad-based... yet with fascinating detail... the roots of the conflict... let's me see the current war from an in depth perspective

Outstanding a must read

If you’re looking for a true and balanced account of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, this is the book for you. It sheds light on many of the intractable issues facing the parties.

thorough if dated

the detailed history stops about 2016, so it leaves out a lot of Netanyahu, Trump.

Informative but Dry

The author seems neutral and unbiased on a very polarizing subject. Lots of information to absorb on a decades long conflict

Excellent Description of the Battle for Palestine

This book describes in detail all the elements of the conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine.

Great Overview of the Israel/Palestine conflict

On purpose I chose a book not written by a Palestinian or an Israeli, for obvious reasons. I felt this book was fair to both viewpoints usually letting the protagonists speak for themselves. Its only real weakness, in my opinion, was it under-emphasized the historical contribution of England to this Middle Eastern conflict. I believe the writer is an Englishman which may explain his glossing over of England’s contributions to the problem.

very thorough general history of region

sometimes histories of israel & palestine can be very good but focused on one particular issue—the mossad, the influence of america, the development of the plo, so it can be hard to know what one is getting into. this is a great general history of the conflict up until the very recent past.

Informative but difficult to read

Informative but too long, too detailed and lacking any attempt at summarizing or building a narrative - more like a stream of consciousness “here’s what people did and said this year, here’s what people did and said next year”. Also weirdly leaves out major historical events (the holocaust is barely mentioned?) as though they’re not relevant or the reader should already know about them.

Decent historical compilation, poor framing

I have mixed feelings about this book. I’ve read a lot of content on the Arab-Israeli conflict and there is definitely some worthwhile historical content compiled in the text. The effort to make an ostensibly neutral account of the localized conflict over a 100 hundred year period with a focus on the on the ground actors is commendable.

However, despite being framed as such, I didn’t get the sense that the author is actually neutral. He isn’t a party to the dispute of course, but it’s very obvious early on his sympathies are not with Zionism in the least. I felt there was a far greater focus on portrayed misdeeds of Jews, while insertion of instances of Arab aggression or mitigating circumstances are put forward flatly and with no elaboration or analysis (in contrast to lengthy discussions of negative impacts of Zionism while overlooking other factors). This gives a skewed impression.

The narrow framing of the book as confined to 1917-2017 and solely focusing on Palestine/Israel itself also presents a warped picture if a reader goes into the text expecting a true overview. Starting at 1917 (actually he briefly touches on the late 1800s) presents a picture of a static Palestine without regard to the fluidity of the area’s demographics over a long historical period. Additionally, by adopting a local focus important phenomena in Europe and the wider Arab world are mostly left out. Under such a framing the conflict appears more simplistic and clear cut then it actually is.

The narrator Michael Page sounds a little condescending as always, but I still enjoy his narration.

Overall a solid piece of historical writing, but I wouldn’t recommend it to someone looking for an overall understanding of the conflict because of its relatively narrow scope (in both time and location). If one is already familiar with the issue and looking for a more localized and individual human history of the conflict this may be worth considering. But I’d personally have been better off not buying it.

Biased

Pro Palestinian but good to get their opinion
80% Palestinian 20% pro Israel
Interesting for people to consider