Ever since the Ottoman Empire was defeated and British colonial rule began in 1917, Jews and Arabs have struggled for control of the Holy Land. Israel's independence in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust was a triumph for the Zionist movement but a catastrophe - 'nakba' in Arabic - for the native Palestinian majority.

This talk launches Ian Black’s book Enemies and Neighbours: Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017, in which he traces how, half a century after the watershed of the 1967 war, hopes for a two-state solution and an end to occupation have all but disappeared. Drawing on a wide range of sources—from declassified documents to oral histories to his own vivid on-the-ground reporting—Black recreates the major milestones in the most polarizing conflict of the modern age from both sides.

Ian Black (@ian_black) is Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. He is a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.

Tom Phillips is a diplomat who currently serves as Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies. He was previously British Ambassador to Israel.

Toby Dodge (@ProfTobyDodge) is Director of the LSE Middle East Centre and Professor in the International Relations Department at LSE.

The LSE Middle East Centre (@LSEMiddleEast) builds on LSE's long engagement with the Middle East and North Africa and provides a central hub for the wide range of research on the region carried out at LSE.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEBlack.