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food
In Palestine, Food Is a Way to Survive, Resist, and Come Together
For the past two years, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have continued Indigenous practices in the face of deprivation and foreign occupation.
Sep 12, 2025
Food—and the denial of it—has come into sharp focus with the Israeli occupation’s mass starvation and genocide in Gaza and the increasing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. Famine has been officially declared in Gaza.
The United Nations World Food Programme had estimated that at least 470,000 people have been enduring famine-like conditions in Gaza, a number growing by the day as the siege and blockade of food into Gaza continues
One in 5 children in Gaza suffers from "severe malnutrition" as of late July. When food is available to buy, the prices of essentials are astronomical, and privatized food aid delivery remains erratic, unsafe, and cruel, with several people shot dead while attempting to secure anything they can get to feed their families.
Amid these atrocities and the images of emaciated Palestinians, it is vital to remember that across every village in Palestine, food has not just been a means to survive but the connective tissue to our culture, identity, liberation, resistance, and to our land. Centuries-old food practices live on in the homes of the steadfast residents that remain. The ingredients and where and how they are grown may have changed as a result of decades of occupation and colonial violence, but customs and flavors endure.
Palestinians adapt and resist, and have done so for almost 80 years.
Agricultural practices and communities have adapted and been transformed. Some have vanished with decades of displacement and extermination, while others have stood firm and celebrated a resurgence. Recipes have evolved to make use of new ingredients connected to the struggle for land and resources, and traditions like al-ʿAwna, a system of collective agricultural labor, embody this spirit of adaptation and resilience. Rooted in mutual aid, al-ʿAwna has long repelled colonial tactics of extermination and displacement by providing communal opportunities to cultivate land, acquire food, cook, and support one another.
For Palestinians, food has been a means to prevail.
A History of Adaptation and Mutual Aid
During the Nakba (the catastrophe) of 1948, more than 530 Palestinian villages were forcibly displaced. People were cut off from their land and farms and lost access to growing Indigenous produce. Many became refugees overnight, pushed into Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring countries and compelled to take up work in urban areas as settler colonialism eroded links to land and agricultural traditions.
Today, Palestinians have to increasingly buy rather than grow their own food, but the meals prepared with these staple ingredients still feature in kitchens and on dinner tables.
Before 1948, farmers from Silwan, a Jerusalem neighborhood, would grow black-eyed beans and green chard in the Bustan area. Foraging for ingredients like khubayza, nettle, milk thistle, and mulberry leaves was and is still practiced in Palestine. Seeds were distributed among Palestinian communities to grow native fruits and vegetables, including a recent initiative in northern Gaza called Thamara that distributes these seeds to those living in tent camps as a result of Israel’s ongoing military onslaught in the Strip.
Food as solidarity
While Palestinians may have been separated from their land where they grew wheat and sesame, their dishes persisted through new recipes and food traditions from different towns and villages, fused into new culinary traditions. Rummaniyeh—a lentil and eggplant stew cooked in pomegranate juice—was modified by Palestinians from Lid and Ramleh who were displaced into Gaza. There, they added Gazan flavors like ‘ein jarada (dill seeds and chili) and red taheini (sesame sauce), giving birth to a distinct new flavor.
These culinary delights revolved around the concept of takaya (soup kitchens), an Islamic tradition based on communities looking after one another. Solidarity was the basis of food cooked and eaten together.
Many takaya were built hundreds of years ago, with Hebron’s itikea established in the 12th century and still in use today. Others followed during the Ottoman era, such as the Fatmeh Khatun itkiea in Jerusalem near Al-Aqsa Mosque, two takayas in Gaza, one in Al-Bireh, and another one in Jenin. Over time, traditions of takaya and giving became prevalent in every Palestinian town and village. Ouneh and faz’a, cultures of mutual aid through funding and community help, were also established to support those in need. Their existence defies settler colonialism ensuring survival and a sense of community despite threats of erasure (see Jerusalem in the Malmouk Era: History and Architecture, Taawon Publishers, Jerusalem, 2024).
Adapting and handing down recipes in spite of a decades-long history of erasure and dispossession is a way of resistance and for traditions to endure.
Six years ago, an initiative was launched in rural Jerusalem to prepare meals for resisters on Mount Sbih that settlers were attempting to occupy. Another itikea was launched in Jerusalem for hospital patients from Gaza who came to the city to receive treatment.
The occupation has realized that there is strength in our traditions of mutually preparing food and passing our recipes through generations. That is why it has targeted takaya across Palestine, destroying some 42 of them in recent years. But my research has consistently shown that our people and our food can overcome this, too.
Food as Memory
For so many Palestinians, certain dishes are tied to an event and a place in time and can evoke strong memories. Jarysheh, a dish of cracked wheat, meat broth, dried yogurt, and lamb, was a hallmark of weddings and funerals in Lifta and Dayr Yasin. But as elders such as Im Ibrahim, a woman from Dir Yasin, recalls: Jarysheh has not been made for a wedding since the Nakba—it is too deeply connected now with funerals and a sense of loss and death from the infamous Dayr Yasin Massacre on April 9, 1948.
Efforts to elevate Palestinian cuisine and food traditions can help prevent food appropriation and theft by the occupation. Adapting and handing down recipes in spite of a decades-long history of erasure and dispossession is a way of resistance and for traditions to endure.
Food Sovereignty, Survival, and Resistance in the Present Day
Today in Gaza, the soil is forever contaminated with heavy metals from the relentless Israeli bombardment. According to a recent estimate of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Gaza is left with only 1.5% of cropland that is accessible and suitable for cultivation. Last month, in a violent assault on Palestinian food sovereignty, Israeli occupation forces raided and destroyed a Palestinian seed bank in the West Bank city of Hebron. A few weeks ago, in the village of Al-Mughayyir near Ramallah, the Israeli military carried out raids, demolished homes, and seized land. In addition to all the violence and forced displacement against the people of Al-Mughayyir, the Israeli army also uprooted 3,000 olive trees from their land, leaving them without land and olives and struggling for the minimum to survive.
For the past two years, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have continued Indigenous practices in the face of deprivation and foreign occupation. Hundreds of takaya have sprung up across the strip and few in Tulkarem and Jenin. Food and money donations pour in, and volunteers help cook food. They have become the primary source of cooked meals for the majority of the displaced population.
What is happening in Palestine today, the starvation and bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli occupation, not only threatens people’s immediate food security, dignity, and health but severely imperils Palestinian food sovereignty. Adaptive practices with deep roots in Palestinian traditions are our hope. They are a means to survive both as people and as a culture and serve as a stark example of Palestinian resilience, resistance, and sense of community. There may no longer be Jarysheh at weddings or black-eyed beans on the farms of Bustan, but there is nevertheless a collective will to survive and, together with our food, outlive the forces that try to erase us.
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Trump Tariffs Are Burdening US Families With 'Back-to-School Tax': Analysis
"Trump's back-to-school message to America's families is crystal clear: Don't expect help, just expect less," said one expert.
Aug 14, 2025
Families of students across the United States are facing significantly higher prices for basic supplies as the new school year begins, a cost burden that a new analysis blames on President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs and the massive Republican budget package he signed into law last month.
The analysis, conducted by The Century Foundation (TCF) and Groundwork Collaborative, estimates that prices for supplies such as index cards have surged by more than 40% this year.
Lunch staples have also gotten more expensive, with U.S. families set to pay roughly $163 more on average for juice boxes, strawberries, and other such items this year, according to the new analysis, which characterized the higher costs as a "back-to-school tax" imposed by the president.
"President Trump's policies are forcing families to foot higher bills for back-to-school essentials from binders and lunch-box staples to clothes, shoes, and even laptops," said TCF senior fellow Rachel West. "From his reckless tariffs to his budget law slashing food assistance and federal student loans, Trump's back-to-school message to America's families is crystal clear: Don't expect help, just expect less."
The analysis was released just as new economic data further underscored the impact of Trump's tariffs on prices across the economy, with wholesale prices registering their largest monthly gain since June 2022.
TCF and Groundwork's findings align with a recent survey by the research firm Deloitte, which found that nearly half of U.S. parents and caregivers believe lunch costs on school days will be higher this year than in 2024.
Liz Pancotti, Groundwork's managing director of policy and advocacy, said Thursday that "President Trump's tax and tariff policies have turned the back-to-school season into a budgeting nightmare for hardworking American families."
"From lunch boxes and notebooks to juice boxes and pencils, parents are being squeezed at every turn—paying more for the school supplies and meals their kids need to succeed," said Pancotti. "No family should have to struggle to afford the basics while the wealthy and well-connected cash in on massive tax breaks they do not need."
"Trump's tax and tariff policies have turned the back-to-school season into a budgeting nightmare for hardworking American families."
The budget law that Trump signed last month is set to deliver trillions of dollars in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations while making unprecedented cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid.
Those programs are used in states across the country to determine eligibility for free or reduced-cost school meals, and cuts inflicted by the Trump-GOP law are expected to leave more than 18 million children across the U.S. without access to free school meals in the coming years.
"President Trump's policies—including his erratic, punitive tariffs—are squeezing families' budgets as they prepare to return to school," TCF and Groundwork said Thursday. "Not only has Trump failed to keep his promises to tackle high prices, but his massive budget law will soon drive costs even higher for back-to-school essentials as its cuts to programs that children, families, and college students depend on take hold."
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'Indefensible': Human Rights Watch Rips US Complicity in Israeli Massacres of Starving Gazans
"The U.S. is backing and even funding a deadly mechanism that is resulting in Israeli forces killing starving Palestinian civilians."
Aug 01, 2025
Human Rights Watch said in a report released Friday that the U.S.-backed Israeli military's massacres of Palestinians seeking food aid in the besieged Gaza Strip are "serious violations of international law and war crimes."
Since the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating in the strip in May, Israeli forces have gunned down Palestinians in the vicinity of the organization's hubs on a near-daily basis. Between May 27 and July 31, the Israeli military has killed more than 850 Palestinians near GHF sites, according to United Nations figures.
"Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families," said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). "U.S.-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths."
HRW stressed that the U.S. is complicit in Israeli war crimes—including the killings of desperate Palestinians seeking humanitarian assistance—given its continued arming of Israel's military and its support for GHF, which Human Rights Watch noted is "run by two U.S. private subcontracted companies: Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions, in coordination with the Israeli military."
"On June 26, one month after SRS started distributing aid at the sites, the U.S. government announced it was allocating US$30 million to GHF," HRW observed. "The source of funding for GHF's first month of distributions remains unknown; in its letter to Human Rights Watch, counsel for GHF said it 'received $100 million from a government other than the United States or Israel,' without specifying the government."
"The Trump administration sent the allocation by circumventing congressional approvals," the group added. "The United States is complicit in Israeli violations of the laws of war in Gaza, given its provision of substantial military aid despite knowledge of the continuing grave violations."
As part of its report, HRW interviewed people who are or were on the ground in Gaza and directly witnessed the Israeli military's violence near aid sites.
"One Palestinian man told Human Rights Watch that he left his home at about 9 pm, trying to reach a site that was due to open at 9 am the next day," the group said. "On the way, he said, an Israeli tank opened fire on him and others as they were walking towards the site."
HRW also spoke to Anthony Bailey Aguilar, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who worked in Gaza as a security contractor for UG Solutions. Aguilar told the group that he witnessed on "numerous occasions" Israeli officers ordering soldiers to fire on unarmed Palestinians near food distribution sites.
Additionally, Aguilar and Palestinian eyewitnesses told HRW that they saw "armed guards within the GHF sites using live fire and other weapons against civilians during aid distributions."
"It is indefensible that, instead of using its significant leverage to press Israel to end its ongoing acts of genocide, the U.S. is backing and even funding a deadly mechanism that is resulting in Israeli forces killing starving Palestinian civilians as a method of crowd control," Wille said. "States should urgently act to stop the extermination of Palestinians."
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