Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel
by Andre Ross
(Verso, £16.99)

THERE’S a millennial tradition of stonemasonry that evolved around the world’s best-quality dolomitic limestone and its Palestinian practitioners are renowned across the whole of the Middle East for their skills. They’ve built virtually every state in the region except, of course, their own.

As the blurb to Andre Ross’s book points out, the stonemasons have been used to build the state of Israel and, in the process, construct “facts on the ground.”  There “they demolish our houses while we build theirs,” is how a Palestinian stonemason, waiting at a checkpoint in Jerusalem, describes his experience to Andrew Ross in this book.

The latter’s greatest achievement is that through elegant and sensitive  prose such unadulterated Palestinian voices are heard loud and clear. Also impressive is the precision of detailed historic data and apposite referencing  — particularly in relation to the labour movement — which contextualises the arguments put forward by the stonemasons.

They range from those advanced by the initially idealistic and inclusive Histadrut, which capitulated to colonialist zionism, to the most recent emergence of non-partisan independent and social-democratic unions on both sides of the Green Line which are capable of challenging the status quo and winning notable concessions from employers. The narrative is compelling.

Neoliberalism has also affected Israel’s social homogeneity, placing an irrevocable chasm between the wealthy few and the rest, which might have influenced the recent electoral challenge to Netanyahu and perhaps points to less reactionary political vistas.

In this Pandora’s Box situation there are as many horrors as there are startling opportunities, which are being debated and explored daily in private, the workplace and the trade unions.

The BDS campaign’s prime architect Omar Barghouti speaks of “‘ethical decolonisation” in a single secular state, where settlers are accepted by the indigenous population on condition that they give up all colonial privileges.

Ross moves continuously and seamlessly between the broad picture and the intimate individual experience, elucidating crucial points as he does so. As one of Ross’s interlocutors points out: “I’ve been building homes over there for 30 years, it’s really my country too, isn’t it?”

A must read.