Ian Black Books
Ian Black is a British journalist and former Middle East editor at The Guardian. He has worked extensively as a correspondent in Jerusalem and other Arab countries and is recognized for his deep knowledge of the region’s politics and history.
Known for: Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017, Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017
Books by Ian Black
Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017
Ian Black’s Enemies and Neighbors is a sweeping, deeply human history of Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel across one turbulent century, from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to the political real...
Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017
Enemies and Neighbours is a comprehensive historical work that examines a century of conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, from 1917 to 2017. Ian Black, a veteran journalist and Mid...
Key Insights from Ian Black
Imperial promises created lasting contradictions
Some conflicts do not begin with a single battle but with a sentence written far away. Black shows that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was one such sentence: Britain promised support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine while also claiming it would not prejudice the rights of th...
From Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017
The Mandate normalized parallel national projects
People often imagine the conflict as an eruption of ancient hatred, but Black makes clear that it was also built through institutions. During the British Mandate period from 1918 to 1947, Arabs and Jews did not simply live together or apart; they developed increasingly separate political, educationa...
From Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017
1948 created victory for one, catastrophe for another
The year 1948 is not one story but two, and Black insists that any honest account must hold both at once. For Jews, the creation of Israel represented statehood, refuge, and the culmination of a nationalist dream sharpened by the Holocaust. For Palestinians, the same events constituted the Nakba, or...
From Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017
State-building and exclusion advanced together
Nations often present their early years as heroic and unifying, but Black shows that Israel’s formative decades from 1948 to 1967 combined impressive state-building with unresolved exclusion. Israel absorbed huge numbers of Jewish immigrants, built state institutions, developed agriculture and indus...
From Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017
1967 transformed borders into an occupation
Sometimes six days can redefine fifty years. Black treats the 1967 war as the hinge of the modern conflict. Israel’s rapid victory over Egypt, Jordan, and Syria brought East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights under Israeli control. For many Israelis, the war c...
From Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017
Palestinian nationalism moved to the center
A people denied statehood often become more politically visible, not less. Black traces how Palestinian nationalism came into its own in the 1970s and 1980s, moving from fragmentation and dependence on Arab regimes toward a clearer independent identity. Organizations like the Palestine Liberation Or...
From Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017
About Ian Black
Ian Black is a British journalist and former Middle East editor at The Guardian. He has worked extensively as a correspondent in Jerusalem and other Arab countries and is recognized for his deep knowledge of the region’s politics and history.
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Ian Black is a British journalist and former Middle East editor at The Guardian. He has worked extensively as a correspondent in Jerusalem and other Arab countries and is recognized for his deep knowledge of the region’s politics and history.
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