Books reviewed: Stone Men – the Palestinians who built Israel
On May Day let us take note of a secret no one likes to talk about: how the West Bank settlements are built by Palestinians forced off the land
Ben Ehrenreich: The
Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine
Andrew Ross - Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel
Not far from the
monstrous checkpoint at Qalandia – the main gateway through which the Israeli
military controls the passage of human beings between Ramallah and Jerusalem –
is a small, outdoor, stonecutters’ workshop, one of hundreds scattered
throughout the West Bank. Whatever may be happening at the checkpoint, at least
one worker can usually be seen standing in the stone-cutters’ yard, his face,
hair and clothes caked with the same white dust that covers the high concrete
wall and the watchtower, where it mixes with the black smoke and char from
burning tyres and the molotov cocktails that local youths, on particularly bad
days, hurl at the checkpoint and barrier that confine them.
When visitors to the
region write about stones, they tend to focus on the ones that Palestinian
youth fling at armed and armoured soldiers. And on the more deadly projectiles
the soldiers shoot back. It’s easy to get lost in that melee. Andrew Ross is
neither distracted nor enthralled by such emblematic scenes. He is more
interested in the stone-cutter who usually remains outside the photo’s frame.
Through him and others like him, Ross examines the unseen structures of
expropriation and exploitation that undergird the occupation as effectively as
all those walls and guns.
Stone Men can be dry, lithic even, but
it consistently provides insights into the troubled and troubling
relationships between Israelis and Palestinians that are hard to come by
elsewhere. Above all, it is a history of labour. Palestine sits on reserves of
high-quality limestone valued at $20bn, and the business of quarrying, cutting
and dressing it provides more private sector jobs than any other industry in
the West Bank. Given that Palestinians and Israelis alike attribute mythic
import to the land, focusing on the stone that is quarried from it – and the
power relations at stake in turning it into homes on both sides of the Green
Line – allows Ross to demystify the conflict while exposing the profoundly
unequal ground on which Israel has been built.
It’s a secret no one likes to
talk about that most of that country, the West Bank settlements and even the
security barrier itself, have been built by Palestinians, and with materials
pulled from the very bones of the land they have lost... read more:
