Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017, by Ian Black
Another history of the Israel-Palestine Conflict with no solutions.
Grove Atlantic, Inc., 2017, 512 pages
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.
My latest attempt to decipher the Israel-Palestine conflict is a readable and comprehensive history that focuses on 1917-2017, what was probably convenient century-spanning bookends when this was published in 2017. Briefly touching on the Zionist movement that actually started in the late 19th century, Ian Black begins with British Mandatory Palestine following World War I, and goes through the entire history of Israel and Palestine and the many wars and many failed peace efforts, up to 2017, just after Trump took office.
Black, a British journalist, states in the foreword that he is attempting to present a balanced and neutral history. I think he tries, but the narrative is clearly more sympathetic to the Palestinians. Whether this is because the Palestinian narrative is inherently more sympathetic or because Black is subtly biased against Israel will probably depend on your own perspective. I think he tried to be "objective," and I detected no lies, misstatements, or attempts to obfuscate or elide inconvenient details (as I sometimes have in other books). However, the Palestinians were frequently cast in a more favorable light by the subtle way in which Black shaded certain events. To give one example, when mentioning the Palestinians who celebrated in the streets after 9/11, or those who give out candy after suicide bombings (which they call "martyrdoms"), images that frequently generate outrage and anti-Palestinian sentiments, Black is always quick to say something about how this was only seen in a few neighborhoods or there is no evidence that it's a widespread Palestinian sentiment.
The Balfour Declaration
His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
- The Balfour Declaration
In this one brief statement, Britain declared that a large share of Palestine would be handed to the Jews. The intent was that the Arabs would take the remainder that was left and they'd all peacefully coexist.
The Arabs (at that time, "Palestinians" were not really a distinct identity separate from "Arabs") got a raw deal, from the perspective that a large territory that had previously been theirs had just been handed to the Jews. This is the sort of imperial move that simply wouldn't be done today, but in 1917, we were still at the tail end of great empires unapologetically acting like empires, and Britain saw the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine as a problem to be dispensed with as tidily as possible. Lord Balfour certainly didn't anticipate the generations of bloody conflict he was setting up, though a bit more concern about the natives (both Jewish and Arab) might have resulted in the British actually doing the work to make sure everyone was settled. Instead, they more or less said "Here you go, now get along."
They did not get along.
Black does talk about the infamous phrase "a land without a people for a people without a land." While eventually picked up by the Zionists, although it was originally coined by a Christian evangelical, in modern times it is frequently cited as evidence that the Israelis (falsely) believe that they founded Israel on empty, uninhabited land. Black makes it clear that nobody at the time thought that, and the phrase "a land without a people" did not mean land that was literally devoid of people, but rather that "people" in this context meant a nation, a people with a coherent ethnic and national identity. Palestinian Arabs at that time were descendants of earlier Arab migrations and had long been under the rule of various Arab empires, most recently the Ottomans, but "Palestinian" as a national identity (and claims that Palestinians are "the indigenous people of Palestine") is a relatively recent claim, according to Black. (Nur Masalha, in Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, tries to argue otherwise, but I was not convinced.)
Black does document in detail the extensive history of Jewish-Arab conflict long before Israel's declaration of independence and the 1948 war. The Arabs were initially willing to tolerate a few Jews (there had always been a few Jews living in Palestine), but became increasingly hostile when Zionists arrived in greater numbers and their long-term goals became apparent. And as Black points out, while most of the early Zionists had a desire to "get along" with the Arabs, many of their early leaders (including David Ben-Gurion) were more explicit about the fact that there were going to need to be some.... transfers.
"An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country. There is no common ground between them. Their national aspirations are incompatible."
- the 1937 Peel Commission Report
By 1937 the situation was pretty much FUBAR and the British just wanted out. When Israel declared independence in 1948, the first Arab-Israeli war followed, Israel won a (at the time) unexpected and decisive victory, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their lands in the event now known as The Nakba.
The Nakba
The Palestinian version of the Nakba ("disaster") is that when the Jews created Israel, they summarily expelled all Palestinians within the borders of the new Jewish state from their ancestral homeland. The Israeli version for a long time was that the Palestinians "left" and there have also long been claims that the Palestinians were in fact exhorted to leave by neighboring Arab countries, promising that they would soon destroy the Jews and everyone could then return home.
This version is contradicted by Israel's "New Historians," a group of Israeli historians who are critical of the traditional Israeli narrative (and who in turn have been criticized by other historians as presenting a biased version that glosses over the Arabs' role in the conflict). Black does not exactly take the New Historians' side, but he does claim that there is little or no historical evidence for the supposed radio broadcasts that convinced Palestinians to flee Israel en mass before their fellow Arabs attacked, and that this is probably basically a historical urban legend.
The Nakba was unquestionably a disaster for the Palestinians. Around 750,000 people were displaced, never to return home, and creating the "refugee camps" in Gaza that exist to this day. A long-standing Palestinian demand in every peace talk has been for Palestinians to have the "right of return," basically a demand for all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to be allowed to return to what is now Israel. Israel refuses, on undeniably pragmatic grounds. If Black is biased here, it's in describing in detail the suffering of the Palestinians, and some of the atrocities that Israeli militias performed on Palestinian civilians, while barely mentioning any of the less reasonable (and more violent and belligerent) stances taken by the Arabs.
Indeed, this was a subtle bias I found throughout the book. Black accurately describes Israeli intransigence, a growing sense of animosity and hatred of Palestinians, and (especially in the Netanyahu era) bad faith dealings. Yet when it comes to describing Palestinian animosity and Arab hostility, he always describes it as a reaction to Israel. Yasser Arafat gets a remarkably sympathetic portrayal; his role as an active terrorist is presented as being part of the "Palestinian resistance" movement, and his duplicitous behavior during the Camp David summit sponsored by President Bill Clinton is likewise presented as Arafat refusing terms that were unacceptable to him.
Unacceptable to him they may have been, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a leftist Labor Party leader who probably offered the Palestinians their best and last chance at a deal in the modern era, was willing to give the Palestinians most of the West Bank and all of Gaza. Arafat refused because Israel wouldn't turn over Jerusalem (a clear non-starter of a proposal) and meanwhile was almost certainly acting with full knowledge of the planning for what would become the Second Intifada.
I found Enemies and Neighbors to be a compelling and informative book. If you find the Oslo Accords, the Camp David summit, all the talk about "1967 borders," etc., confusing, Black lays all of it out in a way that makes clear where the failures were on both sides (but he is a lot more clear about where the Israeli failures were). I did find myself somewhat more critical of Israel after reading this book, and yet the result of this was not great sympathy for the Palestinians, but rather a deeper conviction that both sides are assholes, and it doesn't matter if you hate "both-sidesism" because the problem is insoluble. The Peel Commission's conclusion - "There is no common ground between them. Their national aspirations are incompatible." - is as true now as it was in 1937.
My complete list of book reviews.
Grove Atlantic, Inc., 2017, 512 pages
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.
My latest attempt to decipher the Israel-Palestine conflict is a readable and comprehensive history that focuses on 1917-2017, what was probably convenient century-spanning bookends when this was published in 2017. Briefly touching on the Zionist movement that actually started in the late 19th century, Ian Black begins with British Mandatory Palestine following World War I, and goes through the entire history of Israel and Palestine and the many wars and many failed peace efforts, up to 2017, just after Trump took office.
Black, a British journalist, states in the foreword that he is attempting to present a balanced and neutral history. I think he tries, but the narrative is clearly more sympathetic to the Palestinians. Whether this is because the Palestinian narrative is inherently more sympathetic or because Black is subtly biased against Israel will probably depend on your own perspective. I think he tried to be "objective," and I detected no lies, misstatements, or attempts to obfuscate or elide inconvenient details (as I sometimes have in other books). However, the Palestinians were frequently cast in a more favorable light by the subtle way in which Black shaded certain events. To give one example, when mentioning the Palestinians who celebrated in the streets after 9/11, or those who give out candy after suicide bombings (which they call "martyrdoms"), images that frequently generate outrage and anti-Palestinian sentiments, Black is always quick to say something about how this was only seen in a few neighborhoods or there is no evidence that it's a widespread Palestinian sentiment.
The Balfour Declaration
His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
- The Balfour Declaration
In this one brief statement, Britain declared that a large share of Palestine would be handed to the Jews. The intent was that the Arabs would take the remainder that was left and they'd all peacefully coexist.
The Arabs (at that time, "Palestinians" were not really a distinct identity separate from "Arabs") got a raw deal, from the perspective that a large territory that had previously been theirs had just been handed to the Jews. This is the sort of imperial move that simply wouldn't be done today, but in 1917, we were still at the tail end of great empires unapologetically acting like empires, and Britain saw the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine as a problem to be dispensed with as tidily as possible. Lord Balfour certainly didn't anticipate the generations of bloody conflict he was setting up, though a bit more concern about the natives (both Jewish and Arab) might have resulted in the British actually doing the work to make sure everyone was settled. Instead, they more or less said "Here you go, now get along."
They did not get along.
Black does talk about the infamous phrase "a land without a people for a people without a land." While eventually picked up by the Zionists, although it was originally coined by a Christian evangelical, in modern times it is frequently cited as evidence that the Israelis (falsely) believe that they founded Israel on empty, uninhabited land. Black makes it clear that nobody at the time thought that, and the phrase "a land without a people" did not mean land that was literally devoid of people, but rather that "people" in this context meant a nation, a people with a coherent ethnic and national identity. Palestinian Arabs at that time were descendants of earlier Arab migrations and had long been under the rule of various Arab empires, most recently the Ottomans, but "Palestinian" as a national identity (and claims that Palestinians are "the indigenous people of Palestine") is a relatively recent claim, according to Black. (Nur Masalha, in Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History, tries to argue otherwise, but I was not convinced.)
Black does document in detail the extensive history of Jewish-Arab conflict long before Israel's declaration of independence and the 1948 war. The Arabs were initially willing to tolerate a few Jews (there had always been a few Jews living in Palestine), but became increasingly hostile when Zionists arrived in greater numbers and their long-term goals became apparent. And as Black points out, while most of the early Zionists had a desire to "get along" with the Arabs, many of their early leaders (including David Ben-Gurion) were more explicit about the fact that there were going to need to be some.... transfers.
"An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country. There is no common ground between them. Their national aspirations are incompatible."
- the 1937 Peel Commission Report
By 1937 the situation was pretty much FUBAR and the British just wanted out. When Israel declared independence in 1948, the first Arab-Israeli war followed, Israel won a (at the time) unexpected and decisive victory, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their lands in the event now known as The Nakba.
The Nakba
The Palestinian version of the Nakba ("disaster") is that when the Jews created Israel, they summarily expelled all Palestinians within the borders of the new Jewish state from their ancestral homeland. The Israeli version for a long time was that the Palestinians "left" and there have also long been claims that the Palestinians were in fact exhorted to leave by neighboring Arab countries, promising that they would soon destroy the Jews and everyone could then return home.
This version is contradicted by Israel's "New Historians," a group of Israeli historians who are critical of the traditional Israeli narrative (and who in turn have been criticized by other historians as presenting a biased version that glosses over the Arabs' role in the conflict). Black does not exactly take the New Historians' side, but he does claim that there is little or no historical evidence for the supposed radio broadcasts that convinced Palestinians to flee Israel en mass before their fellow Arabs attacked, and that this is probably basically a historical urban legend.
The Nakba was unquestionably a disaster for the Palestinians. Around 750,000 people were displaced, never to return home, and creating the "refugee camps" in Gaza that exist to this day. A long-standing Palestinian demand in every peace talk has been for Palestinians to have the "right of return," basically a demand for all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to be allowed to return to what is now Israel. Israel refuses, on undeniably pragmatic grounds. If Black is biased here, it's in describing in detail the suffering of the Palestinians, and some of the atrocities that Israeli militias performed on Palestinian civilians, while barely mentioning any of the less reasonable (and more violent and belligerent) stances taken by the Arabs.
Indeed, this was a subtle bias I found throughout the book. Black accurately describes Israeli intransigence, a growing sense of animosity and hatred of Palestinians, and (especially in the Netanyahu era) bad faith dealings. Yet when it comes to describing Palestinian animosity and Arab hostility, he always describes it as a reaction to Israel. Yasser Arafat gets a remarkably sympathetic portrayal; his role as an active terrorist is presented as being part of the "Palestinian resistance" movement, and his duplicitous behavior during the Camp David summit sponsored by President Bill Clinton is likewise presented as Arafat refusing terms that were unacceptable to him.
Unacceptable to him they may have been, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a leftist Labor Party leader who probably offered the Palestinians their best and last chance at a deal in the modern era, was willing to give the Palestinians most of the West Bank and all of Gaza. Arafat refused because Israel wouldn't turn over Jerusalem (a clear non-starter of a proposal) and meanwhile was almost certainly acting with full knowledge of the planning for what would become the Second Intifada.
I found Enemies and Neighbors to be a compelling and informative book. If you find the Oslo Accords, the Camp David summit, all the talk about "1967 borders," etc., confusing, Black lays all of it out in a way that makes clear where the failures were on both sides (but he is a lot more clear about where the Israeli failures were). I did find myself somewhat more critical of Israel after reading this book, and yet the result of this was not great sympathy for the Palestinians, but rather a deeper conviction that both sides are assholes, and it doesn't matter if you hate "both-sidesism" because the problem is insoluble. The Peel Commission's conclusion - "There is no common ground between them. Their national aspirations are incompatible." - is as true now as it was in 1937.
My complete list of book reviews.