Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017: Summary & Key Insights

In 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, promising support for a 'national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine. For many Jews, scarred by centuries of persecution and inspired by Zionism, this was a lifeline—a moral and political recognition of their right to return. For Arabs already living in Palestine, however, it was viewed as an ominous betrayal. How could Britain, an imperial power, pledge a land already inhabited by another people to others? In those few sentences lay the seeds of a century’s conflict.

The declaration reflected both imperial and humanitarian calculations. Britain sought strategic advantage in the Middle East and sympathy from Jewish communities during the Great War. Yet in its ambiguous language—promising both support for Jews and protection for 'non-Jewish communities'—it created a moral contradiction that would haunt subsequent events. What followed was a struggle not only over territory but over legitimacy: whose promise would history honor?

Following the First World War, Britain assumed control of Palestine under a League of Nations mandate. This was no ordinary colony—it was an experiment in imperial management of two rival national movements. Jewish immigration rose steadily, especially under the pressure of European antisemitism. Towns expanded, new agricultural settlements took root, and a modern Hebrew society emerged. For Jews, this was redemption through labor and return. For Arabs, it was a deepening dispossession.

British policies vacillated between appeasing both sides. Arab revolts in the 1930s revealed the intensity of resentment against growing Zionist strength and British duplicity. The Peel Commission’s 1937 partition proposal was the first to admit that two nationalisms could not coexist under one administration. By the late 1940s, Britain’s attempt to balance competing promises had collapsed under violence, leading them to hand the problem to the United Nations. The Mandate’s end was not peace—it was an unraveling.