As you can imagine, there are a lot of difficulties in studying a conflict that spans over 100 years and hasn't been resolved.

My suggestion is that you start with two texts: the ones I'll give you are fairly evenly offsetting (ie. their biases offset each other) and stay as close to the narrative as I've found:

Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: a history with documents by Charles Smith. This is a nice, concise history of the conflict that contains accessible documents that are relevant to the previous section. It is fairly Palestinian-leaning, but still provides a great overview in tandem with the Morris book below.

Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict: 1881-2001 by Benny Morris. This is an Israeli-historian based view of the history of the conflicts surrounding the Palestine region, and the Israeli conflict. It's great to balance this against the Iron Cage book suggested below, to get a balanced view of both sides.

My suggestion is to read both, and you'll get a fairly good overview of the conflict. At that point, if you want more details, more information, and to learn more, you should definitely ask for books that are more specific, or check out our Israeli History Book List since that covers it. However, the book list is something I'm still not done updating, so it'll keep evolving when I get the time.

After or before you read those two books, I suggest you look up the PBS documentary titled "The 50 Years War". It provides you with interviews, first-hand accounts, and a nice overview of the conflict. It's around 5 hours if memory serves, and will be plenty interesting, or at least it was to me.

Now, after you've read the above books and seen the documentary, you've got a good start on the conflict. I'd still be careful when arguing, because there are mountains of other interpretations of the history you haven't read, like Efraim Karsh (who sticks to the traditional Israeli historian view of events) and Rashid Khalidi (who sticks to the traditional Palestinian historian view of events). While biased, you still get valuable insight on some issues from what they have to say, since you learn quite a bit about how easy it is to look at documents and draw different conclusions from them.

Best of luck, and if you'd like more books to read, let me know, I'd be happy to recommend everything on any part of the spectrum you're looking for :).

Also, I know you may be looking for something that goes further than 2001, and gets into more recent history/negotiations. For that, I suggest you read:

Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967 by William B. Quandt for a look into how the American side of negotiations and support has gone (at least at the presidential level).

A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism by Daniel Byman for a look into how Israeli policy and actions against Palestinians and Palestinian groups has worked or not worked along with their objectives.

Israel and Palestine: Peace Plans from Oslo to Disengagement by Galia Golan for a briefer look into a shorter period (only about 13 years) that is crucial to understanding how the conflict has developed since the 1990s Oslo Accords.

So yeah, good luck, and let me know if you need more suggestions :D.

The one I have is "A History of the Modern Middle East" by William L. Cleveland.

Doesnt seem too biased and starts you off from the Ottomans. Its also essentially a textbook.

How Israel was Won by Baylis Thomas is an excellent book of concise historical recap.