Building Jerusalem and Palestine: a short history of cement with Nimrod Ben Zeev

Jerusalem, Palestine and Israel have been built with cement, a material that carries an important and heavy socio-political history. In this episode Nimrod Ben Zeev tells about this material and its use in Palestine and how cement has become a central component in the ongoing conflict. We also discussed the question of racialization of construction work particularly in Israel after 1948. While jobs in construction are generally well paid, these jobs are often associated with Palestinians with a racist undertone, and are often dangerous and do not provide stability. As mentioned by Ben Zeev, modern Israel and Jerusalem have been build by Palestinians, yet this is not acknowledged at any level. Jerusalem has seen a rapid cementification process, with the expansion of neighborhoods in the West and the vertical development in the East in order to accommodate Palestinian Jerusalemites who do not want to lose their residency.

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