Israel and the Palestinians: 3: From the Nineteenth Century to the First World War

In the third of ten programmes exploring the origins and tracing the history of the Middle East conflict, presenter Jonny Dymond is joined by Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Oxford University, and historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. What kind of people lived in Ottoman-ruled Palestine in the early Nineteenth Century? What were the origins of Zionism? How did Arabs react to Jewish immigration into Palestine in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries – and what was the nature of Palestinian Arab identity in this period? Why were the Great Powers so interested in the region at this time? And what was the significance of the Sykes-Picot Agreement – a plan by Britain, France and Russia to divide the Middle East between them?

'How Did We Get Here? Israel and the Palestinians' is a BBC News Long Form Audio production. The presenter is Jonny Dymond and the editor is Penny Murphy. The Radio 4 commissioners are Hugh Levinson and Dan Clarke. The studio engineers are Neil Churchill, James Beard, Rod Farquhar, Mike Regaard and David Crackles.