Rule of Stone

At the core of this documentary is the story of Jerusalem Stone, the material decreed by law to give the city of Jerusalem its singular aesthetic quality. With it, architecture became a weapon in a silent, but extraordinarily effective colonization and dispossession process by design.

Creatively interlacing archival footage and interviews with architects, urban planners, and local residents, Rule of Stone reveals how design and the perception of beauty took part in an invisible war of annexation. After the Israeli capture of East Jerusalem in 1967, Palestinian lands were expropriated and neighborhoods prohibited from expanding, to make way for the construction of a modern city that would solidify the myth of ancient Jewish continuity in the occupied lands.

Should architects and urban planners simply carry out government policy, or be guided by their own sense of ethical responsibility? This is the question resonating through the film. While architects reveled in their task, the city’s transformation helped enforce a policy of demographic control aimed at reducing its Palestinian population. “This was architecture with a message: ‘We are Jerusalem!’” explains one Israeli urban planner, who now wonders why she once blindly complied.