Three indigenous Palestinian secrets

Most Palestinians see themselves as the self-evident indigenous people of the land. The relationship with the land, agriculture, and ancestral heritage has solidified this over centuries. However, huge efforts have been put in by Zionist propaganda groups to erase this fact and undermine this status. Like other colonial endeavors, the colonizer exerts his will on the land for self-profit with a disregard to local wisdom and possible consequences of their actions.

Over the past four months I have encountered a number of Palestinian “secrets” that either Palestinians keep to themselves in order to protect their heritage, or that others keep from the Palestinians in order to deny them from it. 

First, at the beginning of August of this year, Jerusalem faced severe forest fires which consumed the hills of pine trees and uncovered a secret; Palestinian terraces. These terraces date back to the Ottoman period and consensus is that were in fact constructed by the indigenous Palestinian population. This is an ancient technique which attempts to utilize hills for agricultural purposes by cultivating the land and rain fall.

This is not the first time a colonizing nation disregard indigenous practices with the consequences being massive fires. In Australia, the indigenous people were prevented from performing “cultural burns” that would assist the land with regrowth and prevent larger fires. In both these cases, one can see the consequences of disregarding local wisdom. I wonder what our landscape would look like if Palestinians were not prevented from continuing to treat the land as they have for generations. At the very least it would not feel as forced (or as flammable) as the pine trees do.

The second secret that I encountered was during the Spring time of this year in the Galilee with my in-laws. My wife’s uncle “Z” invited me on a nature trip around his hometown of Shafa’amer.  He explained that there is a special plant that is only edible for two weeks during the year and that this would be our last opportunity to find it.

As we went searching for it, Z explained that there is a collective agreement of the Palestinians to keep this plant a secret from their Israeli neighbors: “It is part of my childhood and our heritage, they have taken the most of the land and most of everything else. We prefer that they stay ignorant of this plant.” 

Visually, there is nothing about this plant that suggests one could eat it. It requires some preparation and its flavor is sweeter than a cucumber but similarly refreshing. In the past, Palestinians would go out to collect the plant and eat it next to the natural water sources that flow in the area. Today, the new towns around the water resource have contaminated much of the water, making it harder to find clean and fresh plants.

As we were eating this plant on the side of the path, an Israeli couple saw us and watched us for a while. It was obvious they wanted to know what we were eating but hesitated to say anything. When it became clear that we were not going to volunteer any information, the lady instigated:

“You (Arabs) eat that in salads, don’t you?”

“No, we do not.”

“I am sure you eat it in salads.”

“No, we do not eat it in salads.”

“What is it?”

“A plant from this area.”

“It looks tasty.”

Our culture of hospitality obligated us to offer some to the couple and they were shocked by the taste of the plant. We dodged the rest of their questions and they eventually left without so much as a thank you. Their rude and condescending tone completely justified our secrecy over this plant. 

Most Palestinians will also find it upsetting that hummus and falafel have been culturally misappropriated as Israeli cuisine both here and abroad, we therefore were unwilling to contribute to this subjugation. The reality of such aggressive colonialism is not just the loss of land and resources, but the denial of your identity and heritage. The Zionist narrative is unable to accept the uniqueness of how Palestinian cuisine differs from other Arab cuisines. It is shaped by the land and therefore solidifies not only the Palestinian indigenous identity; but our right to the land as well.

In other colonial contexts, one can see how the agricultural practices of the indigenous people were banned and kept secret from the colonizer, but these peoples have kept the secret amongst them and refuse to have their heritage erased or abused. Z’s main concern is that the younger generation take little interest in our agricultural heritage and this knowledge may one day be forgotten.

The third secret that I encountered was in my neighborhood of Abu-Tor, which is split between a Jewish (West) side and a Palestinian (East) side. The main park in the neighborhood is located on the West side and all residents will come and use it, as none exist on the East side. During one of our family outings in the park, my wife started talking to one of the Palestinian ladies in the park about one of the trees that drops edible fruit, yet no one seemed to be using it. Palestinians will come to collect the fruit, but most of it goes to waste.

The lady commented that: “You can make many nutritious delicacies from this fruit; like a special jelly. This is sold for a fortune in health-food shops and is expensive. If the Israelis in this neighborhood knew the value of this fruit, they would not let it drop and go to waste like this.” There was very little information that I could find online and there are no recipes that I could find in Hebrew. Sure enough, my wife and I collected a bucketful and made dessert the next day, following this lady’s recipe.

In Harold Brookfield’s Exploring Agrodiversity, Audrey Richards (a British social-anthropologist) was accompanying indigenous people in the African Savanah. She remarks that: “These people’s thoughts and interests are in fact… entirely concentrated on objects that the average white man simply does not see.” This seems to be the case in the Israeli-Palestinian context as well. On the one hand, you have the deep generational knowledge of the land, and on the other you have the oblivious colonizer who walks past these agricultural treasures that are hiding in plain sight.

Over the past few years, it has been wonderful to see Palestinian chefs have been publishing cookbooks that celebrate Palestinian cuisine. These are the type of contributions which will help maintain our cultural heritage. Having said that, the smaller “secrets”, which are oftentimes local to specific areas of the land may end up being forgotten. The battle over Palestinian hummus is important, but my bigger concern is for the recipes we might lose over time.

If I had one concluding thought, it would be that we as Palestinians need to find creative ways to preserve our collective knowledge and heritage. The colonization of Palestine is not the only thing that is distancing us from our land, but also the global move of peoples from rural areas to urban ones and the seemingly complete disinterest of many people in the younger generations. For us, the challenge is not simply to preserve this knowledge from the rapid change that Palestinian society faces, but also to reclaim our indigenous identity and practices from those that would want to erase it.