In Gaza, the Hungry Rely on a Humble Plant
ISTANBUL — As the Israeli military campaign to destroy Hamas pummeled his neighborhood in northern Gaza, the Palestinian laborer realized he was running out of food.
The shops had closed, the markets had emptied and fighting prevented supplies from reaching them. So he and his remaining neighbors gathered a plant, khobeza, which grew near their homes, and cooked it to sustain themselves.
“It supported us more than everyone else in the world,” said the laborer, Amin Abed, 35. “People survived the darkest chapters of the war on khobeza alone.”
For generations, the people of the Holy Land have foraged for khobeza, a hearty green with a taste and texture somewhere between spinach and kale that sprouts in knee-high thickets along roadsides and empty patches of dirt after the first winter rains. Cooks sauté it in olive oil, season it with onions or boil it into soup to make tasty, low-cost meals.
Now, this green, a variety of mallow, is making up an outsize portion of many Gazans’ diets by providing an inexpensive way to blunt hunger. At a time when most other food is largely unavailable or prohibitively expensive, Gazans can harvest khobeza themselves and cook it by itself, or with a few other ingredients.
As Israel has imposed a near-complete blockade, aid groups and United Nations officials have increasingly warned that the amount of food entering Gaza cannot feed its roughly 2.2 million people, pushing ever larger numbers of Gazans toward catastrophic hunger. Malnutrition-related deaths have become more common, and an international group of experts warned last month that the entire population of Gaza faced acute food shortages and that famine-like conditions were “imminent” in the north, where aid is scarce.
“People don’t grasp how empty and dire the situation is there,” said Reem Kassis, a Palestinian writer who included a khobeza recipe in her most recent cookbook.
The plant is also eaten in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and elsewhere. In normal times, it is often seasoned with lemon juice or chili pepper.
“It is considered a humble meal, not something you would serve your guests,” Ms. Kassis said. “In the absence of anything else, it is nutritious.”
In Gaza, many families boil it into a thin soup that can be shared among large numbers of people.
“Many people have eaten it during this war because there are no options for different vegetables,” said Sulaiman Abu Khadija, 32, an agricultural worker. “It is easy to get anywhere and can be cooked quickly and simply.”
He said some city dwellers displaced from northern Gaza were unfamiliar with khobeza, but were pleasantly surprised when they tasted it.
The plant is not widely consumed in Israel, but it grows extensively there. During the war surrounding Israel’s foundation in 1948, Arab forces imposed a punishing siege on Jerusalem, and Jews trapped in the city sent their children to forage for khobeza, also known as chalamit in Hebrew. In the end, the siege failed.
Moshe Basson, the executive chef of the Eucalyptus restaurant in Jerusalem, said he had seen a video on social media that said it showed Gazans eating “weeds.”
“This is not a weed,” he recalled thinking.
He was not surprised to see Gazans eating khobeza. “It is a medicine,” he said. “It is full of nutrition, and for me as a chef, it is tasty.”
In Gaza, foraging for khobeza can be perilous.
“No aid or anything else comes down to us,” said Rawan al-Khoudary, 22, referring to airdrops of food carried out by the United States and other countries.
As food grew scarce where she lives in northern Gaza, she said, her husband often went to agricultural land near the frontier with Israel to gather eggplants and khobeza. But during one trip, her cousin’s husband was shot and killed by someone the family believes was an Israeli sniper.
Now, they pick khobeza elsewhere.
“We make it into whatever we can,” she said. “We are living on khobeza.”