As Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas hit his neighborhood in northern Gaza, reducing buildings to rubble and forcing residents to flee, the Palestinian worker realized he was running out of food.
Shops were closed, markets were empty, and fighting prevented supplies from reaching them. So he and his remaining neighbors gathered a plant known as khobeza that grew near their homes and cooked it to sustain themselves, he said.
“He supported us more than anyone in the world,” the worker, Amin Abed, 35, said recently by phone from Gaza. “People survived the darkest chapters of war only for khobeza.”
For generations, the people of the Holy Land have foraged for hopza, a hearty green with a taste and texture somewhere between spinach and kale that grows in knee-high thickets along roadsides and in empty patches of dirt after the first winter rains. Cooks sauté it in olive oil, season it with onions, or boil it in soup to make delicious low-cost meals.
Now, this green, a variety of mallow, is a large part of the diet of many Gazans, providing an inexpensive way to alleviate hunger. At a time when most other foods are largely unavailable or prohibitively expensive, Gazans can harvest their own khobeza and cook it alone or with a few other ingredients.
As Israel has imposed a near-total blockade on the territory, aid groups and United Nations officials are increasingly warning that the amount of food entering Gaza cannot feed its roughly 2.2 million residents, pushing ever-increasing numbers of residents of Gaza to catastrophic famine. Malnutrition-related deaths have become more common, and an international panel of experts warned last month that the entire population of Gaza was facing severe food shortages and that famine-like conditions were “imminent” in the north, where aid is scarce .
“People don’t understand how empty and terrible the situation is there, from the price of a bag of flour to a bag of onions,” said Reem Kassis, a Palestinian writer who included a khobeza recipe in her most recent cookbook.
The plant, which is also eaten in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and elsewhere, grows wild and has a relatively mild flavor. In normal seasons, it is often seasoned with lemon juice or chili pepper.
Ms Kassi said her mother’s family cooked it as a thick stew, topped with caramelized onions and drippings of yeast. Her father sautéed the plant in olive oil and poured lemon juice over it.
“It’s considered a humble meal, not something you would serve to your guests,” Ms Cassis said. “If nothing else, it’s nutritious. You can stretch it, you can add dough or bread, you can add onions.”
In Gaza, where the ingredients are scarce, many families boil it into a thin soup that can be shared among large numbers of people.
“We have been eating khobeza since the time of our ancestors,” said Sulaiman Abu Khadija, 32, a farm worker. “One generation passed it on to the next.”
Mr Abu Khadija, his wife and their three children live in Deir al Balah, central Gaza, and he sometimes walks far to reach open land where he can pick khobeza.
“Many people have eaten it during this war because there are no options for different vegetables,” he said. “It’s easy to get anywhere and can be cooked quickly and simply.”
His family makes soup, boils the leaves and then changes the water to ensure the food is clean, he said.
While he was familiar with the plant before the war, he said some residents of towns displaced from northern Gaza were unfamiliar with it, but were pleasantly surprised when they tried it.
It is often eaten hot, but some Gazans, like Mr. Abu Khadija, find it tastier cold.
The plant is not widely consumed in Israel, but it grows extensively there and some chefs consider it a valuable local ingredient.
Moshe Basson, the executive chef and owner of the Eucalyptus restaurant in Jerusalem, said he had seen a video on social media that he said showed Gazans eating “greens”.
“That’s not weed,” he remembers thinking. “This must be khobeza.”
His cookbook includes recipes that use hopza, he said, and his current menu includes stuffed hopza leaves and hopza sauteed with garlic, olive oil and mushrooms, he said.
He was not at all surprised to see the people of Gaza eating the plant.
“It’s medicine,” he said. “It’s full of nutrients and for me as a chef it’s delicious.”
Throughout their history, Israelis, too, have turned to hobeza in times of need.
During the war surrounding Israel’s founding in 1948, Arab forces imposed a punitive siege on Jerusalem, and Jews trapped inside the city sent their children to forage for khobeza, also known as chalamit in Hebrew.
In the end, the Jews held out and the siege failed.
In this war, with Israeli jets dropping bombs on Gaza and Israeli troops on the ground in parts of the territory, even foraging for hobbeza can be dangerous.
“No aid or anything is coming to us,” said Rawan al-Khoudary, 22, referring to food airdrops carried out by the United States and other countries.
With food scarce where she lives in northern Gaza, she said, her husband often went to farmland near the border with Israel to pick eggplants and kobeza. But during one trip, her cousin’s husband was shot and killed by what the family believes was an Israeli sniper.
Now, they choose hobeza elsewhere.
“We make it soup, we make it stew, we make it whatever we can,” he said. “We live in the hobeza.”
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting from London and Himba Yazbek from Jerusalem.
