Palestinian food is still rare in the West, at least under that name. (“The Gaza Kitchen” and Christiane Dabdoub Nasser’s 2001 “Classic Palestinian Cuisine” were early outliers, issued by small presses dedicated to international issues.) There are those for whom the word “Palestinian” is already a stance, as if simply pronouncing it constitutes an attack on Israel’s right to exist. Still, for each, the problem remains: How to speak of the cuisine, given the political context? Alongside recipes, must there be testimony to the daily tolls of life under Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its blockade of Gaza, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of local olive trees over the past half century?

Source: New York Times February 12, 2020 13:52 UTC