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Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel
"They demolish our houses while we build theirs." This is how a Palestinian stonemason, in line at a checkpoint outside a Jerusalem suburb, described his life to Andrew Ross. Palestinian "stone men", utilizing some of the best quality dolomitic limestone deposits in the world and drawing on generations of artisanal knowledge, have built almost every state in the Middle East except their own. Today the business of quarrying, cutting, fabrication, and dressing is Palestine's largest employer and generator of revenue, supplying the construction industry in Israel, along with other Middle East countries and even more overseas.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews in Palestine and Israel, Ross's engrossing, surprising, and gracefully written story of this fascinating, ancient trade shows how the stones of Palestine, and Palestinian labor, have been used to build out the state of Israel--in the process, constructing "facts on the ground"--even while the industry is central to Palestinians' own efforts to erect bulwarks against the Occupation. For decades, the hands that built Israel's houses, schools, offices, bridges, and even its separation barriers have been Palestinian. Looking at the Palestine-Israel conflict in a new light, this book asks how this record of achievement and labor can be recognized.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews in Palestine and Israel, Ross's engrossing, surprising, and gracefully written story of this fascinating, ancient trade shows how the stones of Palestine, and Palestinian labor, have been used to build out the state of Israel--in the process, constructing "facts on the ground"--even while the industry is central to Palestinians' own efforts to erect bulwarks against the Occupation. For decades, the hands that built Israel's houses, schools, offices, bridges, and even its separation barriers have been Palestinian. Looking at the Palestine-Israel conflict in a new light, this book asks how this record of achievement and labor can be recognized.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published March 26, 2019
18 people are currently reading
798 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Ross
175 books50 followersAndrew Ross is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, and a social activist. A contributor to The Nation, the Village Voice, New York Times, and Artforum, he is the author of many books, including, most recently, Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City and Nice Work if You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 22, 2022
Trigger warnings: ongoing colonialism, xenophobia, explosions (in the past), war (in the past)
Boy howdy did this fill me with all kinds of RAGE. Rage at the British for causing fucking chaos in the first place. Rage at the state of Israel for its ongoing destruction of Palestinian communities. Rage at the education system for not teaching me more about the ongoing issues and the fact that the West Bank isn't a solid piece of land. It started out that way, but Israeli colonisation has turned the West Bank into the holes in Swiss cheese - scattered at random, disconnected from each other.
It's extremely informative reading, even if it DID fill me with rage. Like, did you know that Jaffa was a Palestinian city known for its citrus production? And that it was essentially built over by the construction of Tel Aviv and now Israel pushes the idea of Jaffa Citrus as a "premium Israeli product"? And that Jaffa has now essentially been turned into a medieval-style theme park that completely ignores the centuries of Arab occupation in favour of highlighting the Crusader and Jewish histories?
Yeah. Rage.
And that doesn't even touch on the ongoing destruction of Palestinian communities or the endless hoops to be jumped through on a daily basis.
Boy howdy did this fill me with all kinds of RAGE. Rage at the British for causing fucking chaos in the first place. Rage at the state of Israel for its ongoing destruction of Palestinian communities. Rage at the education system for not teaching me more about the ongoing issues and the fact that the West Bank isn't a solid piece of land. It started out that way, but Israeli colonisation has turned the West Bank into the holes in Swiss cheese - scattered at random, disconnected from each other.
It's extremely informative reading, even if it DID fill me with rage. Like, did you know that Jaffa was a Palestinian city known for its citrus production? And that it was essentially built over by the construction of Tel Aviv and now Israel pushes the idea of Jaffa Citrus as a "premium Israeli product"? And that Jaffa has now essentially been turned into a medieval-style theme park that completely ignores the centuries of Arab occupation in favour of highlighting the Crusader and Jewish histories?
Yeah. Rage.
And that doesn't even touch on the ongoing destruction of Palestinian communities or the endless hoops to be jumped through on a daily basis.
July 3, 2021
Very compelling account of the insidious mechanisms of exploitation used against Israeli Palestinians. Ross weaves together the chronic impacts of the decades-long Zionist project, the financialization of daily life, and the vulnerability of migrants through the overarching lens of stone masonry — a distinctly Palestinian craft used to build the physical landscape of the occupied territories. A deep irony exists within this history, as the Israeli government simultaneously demands this stone for its nation-building project yet deprives its artisans of their humanity. Stone has become the contentious center of an ethnopolitical tug of war. "The protection of antique stone is a coherent response to Israeli manipulation of archaeological findings to buttress Zionist claims on the Land of Israel".
The need to surmount a century of marginalization is further thwarted by the demands of a modern debt economy, imposed by multilateral financial institutions and championed by Palestinian elites. Palestinian resistance has taken a backseat to survival in the wake of privatization and deregulation.
"The growth of a personal credit culture has begun to eat away at the cooperative bonds that hold together Palestinian resistance to the Occupation. Solidarity is eroding as the overriding need to make monthly payments and maintain a personal credit score establishes itself at the forefront of people's consciousness... ready access to loans is a new form of economic pacification."
This precarity extends to workplace protections, which are virtually nonexistent for the West Bank Palestinians and refugees from neighbor countries. These vulnerable groups are commissioned to craft the stone used for "heritage restoration" with minimal pay, grueling hours, uncompensated hours-long commutes, and dangerous conditions. Many are forced into this labor because of slim employment prospects and personal debts resulting from general economic marginalization. The little attention paid to this predicament reveals a misplaced focus; "The concerns expressed were directed less at worker protection than at industrial efficiency... seeing workers' quality of life through the lens of manpower capacity and not from the standpoint of their welfare."
In this light, Ross ultimately argues that "equity earned from building the state translates into political rights within it." As in other settler colonial nations, those responsible for building homes and cities are subsequently denied the decent livelihoods needed to live there themselves. May we challenge wherever possible the Zionism and global capitalism at odds with Palestinian efforts to earn the basic human rights they should not have to fight for.
The need to surmount a century of marginalization is further thwarted by the demands of a modern debt economy, imposed by multilateral financial institutions and championed by Palestinian elites. Palestinian resistance has taken a backseat to survival in the wake of privatization and deregulation.
"The growth of a personal credit culture has begun to eat away at the cooperative bonds that hold together Palestinian resistance to the Occupation. Solidarity is eroding as the overriding need to make monthly payments and maintain a personal credit score establishes itself at the forefront of people's consciousness... ready access to loans is a new form of economic pacification."
This precarity extends to workplace protections, which are virtually nonexistent for the West Bank Palestinians and refugees from neighbor countries. These vulnerable groups are commissioned to craft the stone used for "heritage restoration" with minimal pay, grueling hours, uncompensated hours-long commutes, and dangerous conditions. Many are forced into this labor because of slim employment prospects and personal debts resulting from general economic marginalization. The little attention paid to this predicament reveals a misplaced focus; "The concerns expressed were directed less at worker protection than at industrial efficiency... seeing workers' quality of life through the lens of manpower capacity and not from the standpoint of their welfare."
In this light, Ross ultimately argues that "equity earned from building the state translates into political rights within it." As in other settler colonial nations, those responsible for building homes and cities are subsequently denied the decent livelihoods needed to live there themselves. May we challenge wherever possible the Zionism and global capitalism at odds with Palestinian efforts to earn the basic human rights they should not have to fight for.
December 31, 2023
“Israel’s comprehensive reliance on a transborder working class with no civil rights or pathway to citizenship precludes its full membership in the northern club of nations to which it so aspires (in line with its carefully curated self-image as a small Western democracy besieged by Arab or Muslim terrorism). Instead, Israel is rapidly consigning itself to the same illiberal league as the Gulf monarchies with whom it has reached a diplomatic understanding, and it has set itself on a similar growth track to an even more authoritarian future.”
“Arab an Jewish socialists and communists dreamed of a commonwealth achieved through joint labor organizing and insisted that Arab and Jewish workers had mutual interests they could fight for together. The key to co-existence, they believed, lay in the side-by-side struggles for workplace rights and shared industrial governance. But the Labor Zionists who got the upper hand opted for separation, exclusion, and territorial conquest, thereby laying the foundations of Israel’s apartheid-style state, built largely with Palestinian hands, then and now.”
“Arab an Jewish socialists and communists dreamed of a commonwealth achieved through joint labor organizing and insisted that Arab and Jewish workers had mutual interests they could fight for together. The key to co-existence, they believed, lay in the side-by-side struggles for workplace rights and shared industrial governance. But the Labor Zionists who got the upper hand opted for separation, exclusion, and territorial conquest, thereby laying the foundations of Israel’s apartheid-style state, built largely with Palestinian hands, then and now.”
December 22, 2023
“I learned how to build that wall, so I also know how to take it down”
February 22, 2024
There is a lot within this excellent book. It begins with a history of labour organising from the Ottoman empire, through to the current Zionist era, from the architectural conflict between Palestinian stone and Israeli concrete and then moves on to focus on development in the West Bank before finally focusing on the stone men who work both in the Occupied Territories and Israel.
Ross looks at the value of Palestinian labour to the Israeli state, both officially and unofficially as the numbers of workers crossing the border without permits steadily increases. While there has been discussion of restitution in a post-Occupation future, this has generally been a discussion of land and return. Here, the actual economic value of Palestinian labour for reparations is calculated.
This is inescapably a book about racism as it covers the establishment of an ethnonationalist state. However, most of all, this is a different story of Palestine and Palestinians. The post Naksa (1967 war) concept of sumud (steadfastness) is at the forefront here in all its forms. Whether that means just surviving or holding on to your land, or more controversially, city building on the West Bank, as Bashar Masri has done with Rawabi city.
Stone Men is thoroughly researched and features extensive interviews. My only slight reservation about the book, is that I wish it made more room for some of those interviews in greater depth. For a region so tragically in the news, the voices of Palestinian workers and Palestinian daily life need to be urgently heard.
Ross looks at the value of Palestinian labour to the Israeli state, both officially and unofficially as the numbers of workers crossing the border without permits steadily increases. While there has been discussion of restitution in a post-Occupation future, this has generally been a discussion of land and return. Here, the actual economic value of Palestinian labour for reparations is calculated.
This is inescapably a book about racism as it covers the establishment of an ethnonationalist state. However, most of all, this is a different story of Palestine and Palestinians. The post Naksa (1967 war) concept of sumud (steadfastness) is at the forefront here in all its forms. Whether that means just surviving or holding on to your land, or more controversially, city building on the West Bank, as Bashar Masri has done with Rawabi city.
Stone Men is thoroughly researched and features extensive interviews. My only slight reservation about the book, is that I wish it made more room for some of those interviews in greater depth. For a region so tragically in the news, the voices of Palestinian workers and Palestinian daily life need to be urgently heard.
December 7, 2023
Perhaps because of the title I was expecting this to be somewhat anecdotal in approach, which would have been fine with me. It is highly researched which is great, but also relies a lot on numbers and percentages to the point of it being a bit of a slog to read for me. I didn't feel as engaged with the men as much as I thought the book might have been able to convey because of the heavy reliance on statistics.
It is a fascinating look into a little known aspect of Palestinian history. You see their struggles to maintain their past, while trying to secure a future in a colonial project that stacks everything against them. It does a good job of showing the endless economic hardships they've had to suffer since 1948 which does not get as much attention as the violence perpetrated upon them.
It is a fascinating look into a little known aspect of Palestinian history. You see their struggles to maintain their past, while trying to secure a future in a colonial project that stacks everything against them. It does a good job of showing the endless economic hardships they've had to suffer since 1948 which does not get as much attention as the violence perpetrated upon them.
February 27, 2025
Dust Jacket
Interesting read about Palestinians who are genuinely skilled in the stone work and contraction work they engage in. It’s ironic that they continue building Israeli houses, while Israelis destroy their houses and force them into camps. Israelis could fire them for Balkan or Asian workers, but business owners live Palestinian workers since they are trapped in a cycle of poverty, will work for dirt cheap wages, are genuinely skilled, and are willing to put up with chemical toxins and hazards for work. You can never escape the poverty living there, even if you have a law degree. Also, Palestinian life never gets better since the Palestinian government is often corrupt.
Interesting read about Palestinians who are genuinely skilled in the stone work and contraction work they engage in. It’s ironic that they continue building Israeli houses, while Israelis destroy their houses and force them into camps. Israelis could fire them for Balkan or Asian workers, but business owners live Palestinian workers since they are trapped in a cycle of poverty, will work for dirt cheap wages, are genuinely skilled, and are willing to put up with chemical toxins and hazards for work. You can never escape the poverty living there, even if you have a law degree. Also, Palestinian life never gets better since the Palestinian government is often corrupt.
July 11, 2021
Four stars because this is such an insightful book. The style, at times, is quite complex, or often relies upon the reader needing to remember regional acronyms, or references only made once prior in the writing. However, the urgency to read and comprehend the complexities of situations within Israel/Palestine as viewed through the lens of the stone workers, is vital. I have learned so much, and furthered by justification in being enraged at the crimes committed by Israel and sanctioned by western powers for over 100 years. Wow.
July 8, 2021
Rich and concise. Provided an overview of labor struggles and working conditions within Israel (1948 boundaries) and the occupied territories (1967 boundaries). Of particular note is the development of a Palestinian capitalist class that works with the PA to oppress workers within the West Bank. Class conflict knows no boundaries or borders. Edward Said’s short piece, The Morning After, is complimentary reading.(https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n...)
February 29, 2024
This is one of those books that just leaves you so angry at the world. From the beginning of Israel and even before that to the present day, Andrew Ross delves deep into the labor market in Palestine/Israel, the discrimination, the inequities, the corruption, and sometimes the promising. Very informative, very powerful, but also very sad to read. Makes you want to set fire to the world and be done with it all.
Read
August 3, 2024Really informative book on Palestine but from the unique perspective of the “stone men” who built Israel. I enjoyed that most of the book was focused on interviews with everyday Palestinians, some who didn’t necessarily have a political vision for the future besides a free state/peace. Some parts got a bit monotonous and weren’t as engaging but overall learned a lot.
September 1, 2022
incredibly fascinating history. Well written and engaging journalism and travelogue style format. based on three years of interviews, 2015-18 in Occupied Territories with the exception of The Gaza Strip which was inaccessible to the author.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews