Andrew Ross's Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel (2019, Verso)

<p>David Lloyd sits down with award winning author and professor Andrew Ross to discuss his recent book <em>Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel</em> from Verso: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2926-stone-men<em>.</em></p> <p><em>“They demolish our houses while we build theirs.”</em></p> <p>This is how a Palestinian stonemason, in line at a checkpoint outside &nbsp;a Jerusalem suburb, described his life to Andrew Ross. Palestinian &nbsp;“stone men,” using some of the best-quality limestone deposits in the &nbsp;world and drawing on generations of artisanal knowledge, have built &nbsp;almost every state in the Middle East except one of their own. Today the &nbsp;business of quarrying, cutting, fabricating, and dressing is the &nbsp;Occupied Territories’ largest private employer and generator of revenue, &nbsp;and supplies the construction industry in Israel, along with other &nbsp;countries in the region and overseas.</p> <p>Ross’s engrossing, surprising, and gracefully written story of this &nbsp;fascinating ancient trade shows how the stones of historic Palestine, &nbsp;and Palestinian labor, have been used to build the state of Israel—in &nbsp;the process, constructing “facts on the ground”—even while the industry &nbsp;is central to Palestinians’ own efforts to erect bulwarks against the &nbsp;Occupation. For more than a century, the hands that built Israel’s &nbsp;houses, schools, offices, bridges, and even its separation barriers have &nbsp;been Palestinian. Looking at the Palestinian–Israeli conflict in a new &nbsp;light, this book, largely based on field interviews in the region, asks &nbsp;how this record of labor and achievement can and should be recognized.</p>