Israel and the Palestinians: 3. From the 19th Century to World War One

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 19th Century? What were the origins of Zionism? How did Arabs react to Jewish immigration into Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th 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?

(Photo: The First Aliyah, also known as the agriculture Aliyah, a term used to describe a major wave of Zionist immigration to what is now Israel, between 1882 and 1903. Jews who migrated to Ottoman Palestine in this wave, came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen. An estimated 25,000 - 35,000 Jews immigrated to Ottoman Palestine during the First Aliyah. Credit:: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

Presenter: Jonny Dymond
Producer: Ben Carter
Editor: Penny Murphy