Enemies and Neighbors Book Summary - Enemies and Neighbors Book explained in key points

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Enemies and Neighbors summary

Name: Enemies and Neighbors
Rating: 4.3 (46 reviews)
Author: Ian Black

Ian Black

Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

4.3 (46 ratings)

29 mins

Brief summary

Enemies and Neighbors offers a detailed examination of the complex and often contentious relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. Ian Black provides historical context, personal narratives, and insights into the enduring conflict and ongoing search for peace.

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Culture Social Philosophy Change & Evolution Global Politics European History

Table of Contents

Enemies and Neighbors
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Get a solid primer on the history of the combative relationship between Israel and Palestine.

A great deal has happened since Enemies and Neighbors came out in 2014 – but it was a book of its time. In the years before its release, a lot of historians – including Israeli historians – were looking at the past conflict between Israel and Palestine with fresh eyes using newly released archival documents to fact check the historical narrative that had been coming from government channels for so long.

Black’s effort tries to pin down a factual narrative to show how the relationship between these two has been in conflict from the start, and how efforts toward peaceful coexistence have been repeatedly hampered. It’s a long and tragic tale which effectively started in the 1880s.

The seeds of conflict

This story could start in December 1917, when World War I was drawing to a close, and the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem surrendered to the British Army, giving them control of a land that was considered sacred to Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

But even though Britain’s decisions would bring plenty of conflict to the region, friction had already been brewing. Since the 1880s, small groups of Jewish settlers had been establishing new agricultural colonies in the Palestine region alongside older communities in Arab cities like Jerusalem and Hebron.

This community was known as the Yishuv, and it faced harsh living conditions. To get by, it relied heavily on local Arab labor and transport. But this cross-cultural relationship soon deteriorated.

At the turn of the twentieth century, modern political Zionism began to take shape. Sparked by European and Russian antisemitism, there was an organized push for a secured home. Palestine was an attractive option. By 1909, the Yishuv had built Tel Aviv out of the sands north of Jaffa. But as more Jewish immigrants arrived, the less they relied on Arab labor. This exclusionary attitude, mixed with the settlers’ indifference toward cultural integration and the continued influx of immigrants buying up land and displacing tenants, was bound to spark conflict.

But then, following Britain’s conquest at the end of World War I, London issued the Balfour Declaration, which supported a national home for the Jewish people. To many Arabs – who made up roughly nine-tenths of the population at the time – it felt like a deal made over their heads.

The League of Nations soon issued a mandate that locked in the Balfour framework – known as the British Mandate for Palestine. It established a Jewish Agency, though no equivalent Arab body was created. Local Arab leaders were essentially sidelined and often ignored in negotiations. Tensions were reaching a boiling point.

That point came in 1929. In August, a dispute over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem sparked a deadly riot. Horrific violence broke out, with the worst scenes unfolding in the neighborhood of Hebron, an area with religious significance to both Jews and Arabs. By the time British police restored order, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs were dead, with hundreds more injured.

Commissions were created to investigate the riot. One report highlighted Arab fears of dispossession, but London was at a loss in how to respond.

The Great Uprising

The 1930s was a decade of great change. At its start, the Jewish population was still under a fifth of the total. By 1936, this number had doubled. A lot of that had to do with the trouble brewing in Europe, with many Jews fleeing persecution.

Everything was becoming more urgent for the Yishuv while at the same time it was becoming apparent that the Arab population was at a disadvantage. The Zionist movement had funding and expert legal maneuvering that made it hard for the Arabs to gain traction. When efforts to set up an Arab national land fund failed, the resentment hardened into activism.

The War of 1948

When the Second World War ended, Britain was exhausted and eager to withdraw from the region. So it handed the problem over to the newly formed United Nations, who, in 1947, voted to partition the area into Jewish and Arab states. The plan led to chaos and collapse.

The vote was celebrated by Jews who saw it as long-delayed recognition of their national home. By Arabs, it was considered a betrayal. They rejected the idea that foreign powers could give away their own country. Within hours of the UN vote, violence broke out: Jewish buses ambushed, Arab workers massacred, retaliations spiraled in every direction.

Unsettled lives

After 1949, Palestine was unrecognizable. Israel was a newborn state while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were scattered, bewildered and dispossessed, across neighboring lands that were largely unwelcoming.

Israel made its position clear almost immediately: the refugees would not return. The United Nations disagreed. Resolution 194, passed in December 1948, insisted on the refugees’ right to return or to receive compensation – but Israel brushed it aside.

The Six-Day War and the rise of the PLO

While the PLO offered more organized representation, it was far from unified. Arafat kept Fatah at arm’s length in his desire to operate independently and more aggressively. By 1965, Fatah’s fedayeen were staging small raids, adding to the tension in the area and raising questions as to whether the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and neighboring nations would hold.

That friction caught fire in 1967, leading to the Six-Day War. It was, once again, a war that would reshape everything. Israel’s preemptive air strikes gutted Egypt’s air force within hours, and swift ground offensives rolled through Sinai and Gaza, took the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and seized the Golan Heights from Syria. In mere days Israel had more than tripled its territory and came to rule over roughly 1.1 million Palestinians. For Palestinians it was a naksa – a staggering setback that produced another wave of displacement.

The first shaking off

Arab pride reached new heights in 1974, when Yasir Arafat made a historic speech at the United Nations, offering Israel both “the gun and the olive branch,” and leaving it up to them to choose. As the PLO’s program kept the rhetoric of armed resistance it was quietly opening the door to diplomacy. It was a tactical compromise, but it also ran the danger of splitting the movement.

Peace talks stalled through much of the ’80s as the IDF pushed Arafat into exile in Tunis. And yet, the PLO’s political infrastructure inside the territories kept growing. A tighter, more local Palestinian movement was taking shape under occupation. By the end of 1987, that movement was ready to explode.

The illusions of peace

Founded in late 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas blended nationalism with religion. Its charter portrayed the conflict as a holy struggle rather than a political one. It didn’t recognize Israel, and all of Palestine was considered an Islamic trust that could never be surrendered.

But while Hamas considered Arafat’s moderation a betrayal, the peace talks continued. As the 1990s began, anything seemed possible. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union crumbled, and in 1991, US officials orchestrated an Israeli-Arab peace treaty summit in Madrid. For the first time, Palestinians sat across from Israelis at an international table – as equals.

Gaza and the widening divide

As the new millenium got underway Palestinian leadership was in crisis. Yasser Arafat was in ill health and losing influence. In 2003, Mahmoud Abbas, another PLO leader, became prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, and he would become president when Arafat passed away in 2004.

But Abbas wasn’t very charismatic and proved unable to keep his party in power. It all fell apart in early 2006, when an international push for a new round of elections backfired in spectacular fashion. The world was demanding Palestinian democracy – and the world recoiled when Hamas soundly defeated the PLO establishment. Washington and Brussels responded by cutting off aid.

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What is Enemies and Neighbors about?

Enemies and Neighbors (2017) tells the story of Israel and Palestine, two peoples building nations on the same piece of land and the century of wars, uprisings, and peace deals that have ensued. From the conflicts of the British Mandate to the shattered hopes of the Oslo Accords and beyond, it offers a clear-eyed look at how this relationship has become so volatile and destructive.

Who should read Enemies and Neighbors?

History buffs looking for an overview of one of the world’s most enduring conflicts
Documentary fans interested in real-world power struggles
News junkies who want more context about today’s headlines

About the Author

Ian Black was a British journalist, author, and Middle East expert best known for his decades-long career with the Guardian, where he served as Middle East editor, diplomatic editor, and Jerusalem correspondent. He combined sharp political analysis with a historian’s eye for detail, covering wars, peace talks, and daily life across the Arab world and Israel.

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