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nakba
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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Speaking Out Against Genocide: Reckoning and Accountability
The truth is that most of us—not all of us, but most of us who grew up in Jewish communities—supported Israel and Zionism, until, often after a very long time, we didn’t.
Aug 31, 2025
I’ve been seeing a number of different discussions lately (posts and articles) about how Jews who have been speaking out against Israel’s genocide since October 2023 are feeling about Jews who are only more recently speaking out. How one feels, how one thinks these “newcomers” should be regarded, and one’s (potential) relationship with them, how one embraces them (or not), are part of the discussion. And questions about the need for accountability, repentance, and reckoning have been central to the conversations.
I believe strongly in processes of accountability and in reckoning, but what concerns me in what I’m reading is that it sounds to me like the discussion is about “us” and “them,” (the “good” and “not so good” Jews)—that is, those who have supported (or been silent until recently about) the genocide and those of us who haven’t. I do not mean to suggest that this kind of “us” and “them” characterization is the intention, but it is how some of it has come across to me. (And what struck me is that some of the posts/articles to which I refer come from those who have just themselves begun speaking out more openly and critically in recent years.)
I, of course, see groups and individuals speaking out now who still have deeply problematic analyses and who don’t begin to address the root of the problem—the original and ongoing Nakba—or decades of complicity. And I, too, have feelings about those who have taken so long to finally act with a semblance of humanity and who have not been vociferous in their opposition to widespread Jewish community support for, and complicity in, genocide. But the truth is that most of us—not all of us, but most of us who grew up in Jewish communities—supported Israel and Zionism, until, often after a very long time, we didn’t. And even after not supporting Israel or declaring ourselves anti-Zionists, there was so much to learn, to de-exceptionalize, to challenge ourselves on. And, certainly for me, that process continues to this day.
My own journey away from Zionism did not happen fully until the late 1980s, after I participated in an international peace conference (Road to Peace) with Palestinians from the US and from Palestine. While I had always been against the occupation of 1967, it was at the conference (and during the yearlong pre-conference planning) that I learned about the Nakba, about the right of return, about the Zionist movement’s role in the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land and homes. The information was out there way before the conference and way before I identified as an anti-Zionist. But I had blinders on, and I didn’t challenge myself, or listen, nearly enough.
I’m interested in how we can build upon the ways people have (finally) spoken out... toward genuine recognition that this genocide is not an aberration in the history of Zionist and Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.
So I feel like some of the calls for accountability I’m reading let “us” off the hook, like we don’t have to engage in our own ongoing reckoning and accountability. I don’t mean only for things past, but for the ways we—even unwittingly—continue to perpetuate and support injustice or Jewish exceptionalism or even stay silent (or weaken our messaging) at critical times when our voices could make a difference. Again, I believe we need to continually engage in this process to challenge both the (very present) Zionist framework that values Jewish lives over others, as well as the Jewish exceptionalist framework—with which many of us were brought up—of Jews as the chosen people. (And even those of us who flatly reject the latter concept might still find ourselves perpetuating the notion that there is a Jewish ethical tradition that is—just a bit!—more special or different than that of others.)
Sometimes as I read Steven Salaita–whose ethics and integrity and brilliance impact me deeply—and pay close attention to his words, I’ll start to feel something (discomfort?) and then I think, oh no, I see myself in that. And I know I need to consider long and hard about how to challenge what I see myself perpetuating. He doesn’t point fingers. He just says it as it is.
Reflecting upon the current moment, what I think about when I see all these new people, particularly many Jews, starting to move in the right direction is how they might move beyond where they are at right now to where they and we could and should be—acknowledging and opposing the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 and all that follows from that. Because we know that the complicity of US Jewish institutions in supporting the Zionist movement and then Israel in the ongoing expulsion of the Palestinian people from Palestine, and in justifying and/or remaining silent about the Nakba, goes back for decades—including among many of us who now define ourselves as anti-Zionists.
So I see one part of the work I am committed to as trying to open up spaces for those who are now speaking out in opposition to this genocide, to this starvation campaign, for real learning, and for community accountability about the Nakba of 1948 and the ongoing Nakba. I’m interested in how we can build upon the ways people have (finally) spoken out—just as so many of us were motivated at some point to speak out and renounce our support for Zionism—toward genuine recognition that this genocide is not an aberration in the history of Zionist and Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.
The goal for me in this particular work is to have more and more of us within our Jewish communities joining, with integrity, in the Palestinian-led movement for justice. There is so much out there to deepen our analysis and organizing—resources and educational materials of Palestinian organizations, scholars, historians, and activists. My own journey has included so much learning over many years and then participating in the creation of educational curricula, first (inspired by Zochrot) Facing the Nakba, and, in more recent years, together with Project48, the Palestinian Nakba curriculum. So many resources abound, and I consider part of my responsibility now, which I embrace, to engage deeply with these resources within Jewish communities where there are openings to strengthen our collective accountability, and our commitment, in word and action, to seeking and pursuing justice.
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'Colossal Level of Destruction' as Israel Ethnically Cleanses Gaza City Neighborhoods
"The widespread destruction in Zeitoun," said one group, "is part of a deliberate Israeli policy: completing a campaign of genocide and erasing Palestinian urban life."
Aug 19, 2025
Israeli forces continued bombing, shelling, and shooting civilians and systematically demolishing homes in Gaza City Tuesday as part of a US-backed plan to ethnically cleanse 1 million Palestinians from large parts of the embattled enclave so that Israel can reoccupy the coastal strip.
For more than a week, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombing and shelling have pounded areas including the Zeitoun and Sabra neighborhoods of Gaza City, destroying hundreds of homes and also targeting displacement shelters in a bid to force Palestinians to flee to southern parts of the coastal enclave.
According to Al Jazeera, there are approximately 11 displacement centers in Zeitoun, each housing 4,000-4,500 Palestinians, as much of Gaza City's largest neighborhood had already been bombed and razed to the ground in order to create the Netzarim Corridor and "buffer zone."
Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told the Egyptian news site Mada Masr that the IDF is deliberately bombing inhabited apartment towers, wiping out large portions of extended families.
Heavy Israeli air strikes have hit a home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, where shrapnel from another attack wounded a child. Israel’s military is intensifying its bombardment following its plan to take over Gaza City and forcibly displace Palestinians south.
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— Al Jazeera English (@aljazeera.com) August 17, 2025 at 2:15 AM
On Tuesday, an IDF strike on the Hosary family home reportedly killed at least 28 people. Although many victims remain trapped in the rubble, rescuing them is impossible, according to Civil Defense officials, as Israeli forces are targeting people who attempt to do so.
"We are terrified because most of the airstrikes on homes came without warning," Zeitoun resident Shady Mohamed told Mada Masr. "The bombardment is everywhere around us."
In addition to massive bombs and artillery shells—many of them supplied by the United States—the IDF is using snipers and quadcopter drones armed with machine guns and explosives to target and forcibly expel Palestinian civilians from Zeitoun and other areas.
"The situation was terrifying," Zeitoun resident Sahar L. told Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor after fleeing. "I clutched my daughter as we walked over shattered glass and rubble, surrounded by smoke, flames, and explosions everywhere. I ran without knowing where to go. God help us. Enough, world, enough."
"... the military levelling buildings in controlled demolitions in multiple parts of Gaza city.. Israel destroyed 450 buildings in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza city in the last 9 days alone. That's almost 50 buildings destroyed every day. Its a colossal level of destruction"
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— Saul Staniforth (@saulstaniforth.bsky.social) August 19, 2025 at 6:11 AM
The tactic isn't new—in 1948, Jewish militias used massacres and the threat thereof to terrorize Arabs into fleeing Palestine as it was conquered by the nascent state of Israel during what Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe."
Current-day Israeli political and military leaders have called for a new Nakba, including former Gen. IDF Aharon Haliva, who recently said that for every Israeli killed during the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, "50 Palestinians must die," and it doesn't matter "if they're children."
Amid relentless IDF attacks, residents of northern and central Gaza are being pushed southward into the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people are being confined in an 11-square-mile area.
Among the dozens of Palestinians reportedly killed across Gaza within the past 24 hours are at least five people—including two children—who died of malnutrition amid what Amnesty International on Monday called a "deliberate campaign" of weaponized starvation caused largely by Israel's blockade on food, medicine, and other vital supplies. At least 266 Palestinians, including 122 children, have starved to death in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
IDF tanks and armored vehicles have faced sustained resistance as they attempt to achieve the objectives of Operation Gideon's Chariots, a US-backed plan to conquer and indefinitely occupy Gaza, ethnically cleanse its Palestinian residents, and open the strip for possible Israeli resettlement. US President Donald Trump has said that he wants to transform Gaza into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza City has prompted renewed calls for international action.
"The widespread destruction in Zeitoun... is part of a deliberate Israeli policy: completing a campaign of genocide and erasing Palestinian urban life through the total destruction of homes, infrastructure, and access to basic livelihoods," Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said Sunday.
"The international community, including the United Nations and global legal bodies, must intervene urgently to halt the massacres, protect civilians, and hold Israeli leaders accountable for these heinous crimes against the civilian population," the Geneva-based group added.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel—has issued three provisional orders since January 2024 for Israel to prevent genocidal acts, allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and stop attacking Rafah. Israel has been accused of ignoring or violating all three orders.
The other Hague-based international tribunal, the International Criminal Court (ICC), last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who ordered the "complete siege" on Gaza—for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation.
Israel's 683-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 62,064 Palestinians dead, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Experts say the actual death toll is probably much higher, as thousands of people are missing and believed dead and buried beneath rubble. More than 156,500 Palestinians have also been wounded in Gaza.
Under tremendous domestic and international pressure, Israel said Tuesday that it would respond by Friday to a new ceasefire proposal approved by Hamas under which around half of the 20 remaining living Israeli and other hostages and bodies of some who were killed on October 7 or after would be released in a phased exchange deal. In return, approximately 150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons would be freed.
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