Food trucks provide rare bright spot in West Bank

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK » The coronavirus crisis has hit West Bank restaurants hard. But one part of the dining sector is bucking the trend: food trucks.

With dine-in restaurants mostly closed due to health restrictions, food trucks have allowed entrepreneurial businessmen to find a way to keep working. It’s a rare bright spot in a territory where unemployment is well over 20%.

Issa Haj Yasin, an engineering student, opened his first food truck before the coronavirus crisis to provide himself an income to cover his university tuition and living expenses.

The business stopped in the first months of the crisis, but reopened as the pandemic worsened. Now business has more than doubled.

“Now I have six employees who are working in two vans, and I am preparing a new van that is going to have another four new employees,” Haj Yasin said.

The truck parked by the curb on a central street in the West Bank city of Ramallah as workers grilled

hot dogs and customers waited for their orders.

Mohammed Shkukani is another entrepreneur who runs a coffee van in Ramallah.

He said the mobile van was his first business. He likes having the flexibility of being able to move. “If I face a political or eco

nomic problem in a place, I canmove to another place,” he said.

The pandemic comes at a hard time for the Pales

tinian economy. It grew by just 1% in 2019 and is projected to shrink by 7.6% to 11% in 2020, according to the World Bank. The inter

nationally backed Palestinian Authority, which governsparts of theWestBank, is expected to face a funding gap.

PHOTOS BY NASSER NASSER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Emad Abdeljawwad sells grilled hot dogs and beverages out of a converted van in theWest Bank city of Ramallah.

A welder converts a van into a food truck at a workshop in theWest Bank city of Ramallah.