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israeli occupation
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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How the UN Can Act Decisively to End Genocide in Gaza
What is urgently needed is for the General Assembly to hold an Emergency Special Session to vote on a UN protection force, as well as a UN-led arms embargo, trade boycott, and divestment from Israel.
Sep 03, 2025
One year ago, the United Nations General Assembly demanded that Israel must end its occupation of the Palestinian Territories within 12 months.
The General Assembly voted, by 124 votes to 14, with 43 abstentions, for a strong resolution that not only “demanded” an end to the occupation within a year, but called on all countries to refrain from trade involving Israeli settlements and from transfers of weapons “where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that they may be used in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The General Assembly was meeting on September 18, 2024, in an Emergency Special Session, invoking the “Uniting For Peace” principle to act where the UN Security Council has failed to do so. The General Assembly had asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the legality of the Israeli occupation and the legal consequences arising from it, and the new resolution was triggered by the court’s ruling, on July 19, 2024 that the Israeli occupation is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible.”
A year later, Israel has failed to comply with any of the demands of the 124 states. On the contrary. It has escalated its genocide in Gaza by cutting off nearly all food, medicine, and humanitarian assistance; launching relentless bombardments; expanding ground incursions; and displacing virtually the entire population. All over the world, people are calling on leaders and politicians to do whatever it takes to put a stop to this holocaust before it goes any further.
As world leaders gather again in New York for another UN General Assembly beginning on September 9, how will they respond to Israel’s ever-escalating genocide and continued occupation and expansion of settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem? Grassroots political pressure is building on all of them to turn the strong words in ICJ rulings and UN resolutions into meaningful action to end what the vast majority of the world recognizes as the most flagrant genocide of our time.
Countries have taken individual actions to cut off trade with Israel and cancel weapons contracts. Turkey announced a total trade boycott on August 29, and closed its airspace to Israeli planes and its ports to Israeli ships. Twelve members of the Hague Group, formed to challenge Israeli impunity, have formally committed to banning arms transfers and blocking military-related shipments at their ports. Sweden and the Netherlands have urged the European Union to adopt sanctions on Israel, including suspending the EU-Israel trade deal.
But most of the 124 countries that voted to demand an end to the occupation have done very little to enforce those demands. If they fail to enforce them now, they will only confirm Israel’s presumption that its corrupt influence on US politics still ensures blanket impunity for systematic war crimes.
What will be left to salvage of Palestine if the UN can only counter Israel’s genocide and America’s bombs with endless court rulings, resolutions, and declarations, but no decisive action?
In response to this unconscionable state of affairs, Palestine’s UN representative has formally asked the UN to authorize an international military protection force for Gaza to help with the delivery of humanitarian aid and protect civilians. So has the largest coalition of Palestinian NGOs, PNGO, as well as pro-Palestine groups and leaders such as Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins. There’s a growing global movement calling for the UN General Assembly to take up this request in another Emergency Special Session when it meets this month. That would be well within the authority of the General Assembly in a case like this, where the Security Council has been hijacked by the US abuse of its veto power.
Whether or not this initiative for a protective force succeeds, the truth is that the governments of the world already have countless ways to support Palestine—they simply need to muster the political will to act. Israel is a small country that depends on imports from countries all over the world. It has diversified sources for many essential products, and, although the United States supplies 70% of its weapons imports, many other countries also supply weapons and critical parts of its infernal war machine. Israel’s dependence on complicated international supply chains is the weakest link in its presumption that it can thumb its nose at the world and kill with impunity.
If the large majority of countries that have already voted for an end to the occupation are ready to back their words and their votes with coordinated action, a UN-led trade boycott, divestment campaign, and arms embargo can put enormous pressure on Israel to end its genocide and starvation of Gaza, and its occupation of Palestine. With full participation by enough countries, Israel’s position could quickly become unsustainable.
Two years into a genocide, it is shameful that the world’s governments haven’t already done this, and that their people have to plead, protest, and push them into action through a dense fog of spin and propaganda, while leaders mouth the right words yet keep doing the wrong things.
Many people compare the problem the world faces in Israel to the crisis over apartheid South Africa. The similarity lies not only in their racism, but also in the Western countries’ shameful complicity in their human rights abuses and lack of concern for the lives of their victims. It is surely no coincidence that the United States, with its own history of genocide, slavery, and apartheid, acted as the main diplomatic supporter and military supplier of apartheid South Africa, and now of Israel.
But it took over 30 years, from the first UN arms embargo and oil sanctions in 1963 to the final lifting of UN sanctions in 1994, before UN action helped bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa. It was not until 1977 that the UN even made its arms embargo binding on all members. In the case of Israel and Palestine, the world cannot wait 30 years for its actions to have an impact. What will be left to salvage of Palestine if the UN can only counter Israel’s genocide and America’s bombs with endless court rulings, resolutions, and declarations, but no decisive action?
In a world that is truly united to end Israel’s genocide, threats of US and Israeli retaliation would isolate the United States and Israel more than those they target.
One initiative that will be debated and voted on in the General Assembly is the one advanced by France and Saudi Arabia. In July they hosted a high-level UN conference on the “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the implementation of the Two State Solution.” But its agenda is weak, and it avoids any strong action to pressure Israel to end the genocide or the occupation.
The first steps the declaration calls for are a ceasefire in Gaza, the restoration of the Palestinian Authority’s control of Gaza, and then the deployment of an international military “stabilization” force. But Israel has already rejected the first two steps, and critics warn that a stabilization force would mean foreign troops deployed in Gaza, not to protect Palestinians from Israeli bombs and bulldozers, but to police them, contain resistance, and reinforce Israeli demands.
Moreover, the declaration contains no enforcement mechanism. Instead, it offers only carrots—promises of recognition, trade, and arms deals—while Israel pays no price for continuing its crimes.
And while the declaration could pave the way for more Western countries to join the 147 countries that already recognize Palestine as an independent state, without concrete pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and end the occupation, such recognition risks being symbolic at best—and, at worst, may embolden Israel to accelerate its campaign of mass killing, settlement expansion, and annexation before the world can act.
What is urgently needed is for the General Assembly to hold an Emergency Special Session to vote on a UN protection force, as well as a UN-led arms embargo, trade boycott, and divestment from Israel, conditioned on ending the genocide in Gaza and the post-1967 occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The arms embargo and economic measures against Israel should be binding on all UN members, with the full support of the UN secretariat, which can provide staff to organize and supervise them, in coordination with UN members. China, the largest supplier of Israeli imports, and Turkey, which was the third largest before it cut off trade with Israel, should both be ready to take leadership roles in a UN boycott and arms embargo. The European Union collectively does even more trade with Israel than China, and has failed to unite against the genocide, but strong UN leadership could help Europe to overcome its divisions and join the campaign.
As for the United States, its role in this crisis, under former President Joe Biden and now under President Donald Trump, is to encourage Israel’s crimes, provide unlimited weapons, veto every Security Council resolution, and oppose every international attempt to end the slaughter. Even as majorities of ordinary Americans now side with the Palestinians and oppose US military support for Israel, the oligarchy that rules America is as guilty of genocide as Israel itself. As the world comes together to confront Israel’s crimes, it will also have to confront the reality that Israel is not acting alone, but in partnership with the United States of America.
Aggressors and bullies get their way by dividing their enemies and picking them off one at a time, as the world has seen the European colonial powers and now the United States do for centuries. What every aggressor or bully fears most is united opposition and resistance.
Israel and the US currently apply huge political pressure against countries and institutions that take action to boycott, sanction, or divest from Israel, as Norway has by its decision to divest its sovereign wealth fund from Caterpillar for supplying bulldozers to demolish homes in Palestine. In a world that is truly united to end Israel’s genocide, threats of US and Israeli retaliation would isolate the United States and Israel more than those they target.
Recent UN General Assemblies have heard many speeches lamenting the UN’s failure to fulfill its most vital purpose, to ensure peace and security for all, and how the veto power of the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council prevents the UN from tackling the world’s most serious problems. If, at this year’s UN General Assembly, the world can come together to confront the holocaust of our time in Gaza, this could mark the birth of a reenergized and newly united UN—one finally capable of fulfilling its intended role in building a peaceful, sustainable, multipolar world.
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Palestinian Women on Hunger Strike to Demand Israel Return Body of Peace Activist Killed by Israeli Settler
"Whatever the occupation forces will do, whatever the settlers will do, we will persist," said the mother-in-law of slain activist Awda Hathaleen.
Aug 04, 2025
More than 60 Palestinian women have launched a hunger strike to demand Israel return the body of a peace activist killed by an Israeli settler last week in the occupied West Bank.
The body of Awda Hathaleen, who was shot and killed on Monday as Israeli settlers moved in to bulldoze his village, is still being held by Israeli authorities.
Meanwhile, his killer—Yinon Levi, a notorious settler who has been sanctioned by several governments, at one point including the United States before President Donald Trump lifted the sanctions—has been set free after a brief period of house arrest.
Hathaleen, who appeared last year in the documentary No Other Land, was highly regarded among peace advocates in Palestine, Israel, and the United States—where he was scheduled for an interfaith speaking tour before he was abruptly deported by the U.S. government in June.
Israeli police have refused to return Hathaleen's body to family members for a burial unless his family agrees to hold a quick funeral under cover of night, outside the village, with no more than 15 people in attendance.
The family refused these restrictive conditions, saying: "Awda is not a thief. We will not bury him in the dark."
Following Hathaleen's killing, Israeli forces have also arrested at least eight others from the village—including Hathaleen's brother.
According to Middle East Eye:
Israeli forces have raided family homes in the village each night since the killing, arresting their husbands and brothers and beating other family members.
"A woman would be not properly dressed, lying in bed, and they would come in and open the door and say, 'We want your husband, we want your brother'," Ikhlas Hazalin, Hathaleen's sister-in-law, told Middle East Eye on Thursday.
"Whenever they didn't find whom they were looking for, other family members would be beaten–his brother, or one of his family members—until the wanted person was brought in."
Hazalin added: "I've never seen such brutality."
On Thursday, 60 women from Hathaleen's village of Umm al-Khair launched a hunger strike, demanding the Israeli military occupation release his body and free the eight others currently being held in detention.
"I found him soaked in his blood," Hathaleen's mother told Al Jazeera. "I started calling his name: 'Awdah!...Awdah!' But he wasn't responding."
"I am on hunger strike until they hand me my son's body," she said. "I want to smell him."
Hathaleen's wife, Hanady, said that their three children—none of whom is older than five—have spent recent days crying for their dad.
"The moment his father was killed, Mohammed was next to him, shouting, 'My God! My God!'," she said. "Mohammed is only two-and-a-half years old."
Her husband's death was the result of the government-backed settler violence he'd spent years attempting to resist. Since October 2023, nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the military and settlers in the West Bank, while Israel has demolished nearly 3,000 family homes, according to the United Nations.
In 2025 alone, there have already been more than 750 documented attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians or their property, which the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says is a 13% increase from the previous year. Home demolitions ordered by Israeli authorities forcibly displaced over 1,200 Palestinians in the first half of the year.
The eight people from Umm al-Khair currently being held in detention are among more than 3,000 being held without charges by the Israeli military under administrative detention. Meanwhile, according to the human rights group Yesh Din, 94% of settlers who wage violence against Palestinians walk away without even facing criminal charges.
Allegra Pacheco, head of the West Bank Protection Consortium, described the attack on Umm al-Khair as a microcosm of this grave power imbalance.
"The people who were injured are in prison. The people who tried to prevent this are in prison. The people who acted in self-defence are in prison," she told Middle East Eye. "And the guy with the smoking gun—the guy who shot the gun on video—is sitting at home and drinking coffee."
Hathaleen's family says the military's refusal to let him have "the proper funeral that he deserves" is yet another indignity that they intend to resist.
On Thursday, his wife and nieces announced that they would not eat until his body was returned. Dozens of other women soon joined them across the village—ranging from teenagers to those in their 70s.
Many men in the village have said they will also join if the military continues to hold Hathaleen.
Israeli peace activists have joined in calls for Hathaleen's body to be returned to his family and for other Palestinian prisoners to be freed. Over the weekend, dozens of protesters marched through West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, leading to four arrests.
(Video: International Solidarity Movement)
"He was a great activist and a great man," said Hathaleen's mother-in-law, Fatme, in a video posted by the International Solidarity Movement. "Our hearts are in pain for him."
"We already had dizziness and fainting from hunger and thirst. Doesn't matter," she said. "Whatever happens to us, we will continue until he is returned to us."
The hunger strikers say they hope their sacrifice will put enough international attention on the Israeli authorities that they'll be pressured to return Hathaleen's body and free their friends and family without conditions.
"We will persist," Fatme Hathaleen said. "Whatever the occupation forces will do, whatever the settlers will do, we will persist."
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