The Palestinian cooking up a storm – with humanitarian aid, love and resistance

Hamada Shaqoura’s green eyes stare intently at the camera with a serious expression, making it hard to look away. In the video, we see this young Palestinian cooking on the ground of the tent where he lives in Gaza. He chops an onion, a bell pepper, and a tomato to make a sauté in a pan over a gas tank flame, then adds canned meat. He wraps the mixture in bread that he coats and fries. The result is a crispy roll that he shares with some children in one of the displacement camps in the Strip.

At the bottom of the video posted on Instagram, the author writes: “The golden sandwich, made with 95% humanitarian aid ingredients and 5% of love and resistance.” These words aptly define Shaqoura’s recipes, which have become a symbol of resilience for the rest of the world.

This dish (and its corresponding video) was one of the first he created and posted on social media. “It all started with my desire to cook tasty and different food from what we receive in humanitarian aid. The reaction and happiness of the children motivated me to cook large quantities and distribute them in the camps,” explains Shaqoura, 32, in a conversation with elDiario.es. The young cook takes advantage of every opportunity to connect to the internet, which sometimes requires walking several hours to find coverage.

“Before the war, I worked on social media marketing projects, especially for restaurants,” he points out. Although he always used his position as an influencer to “contribute to community issues through social media,” a virtual stroll through his Instagram profile reveals how much his content and, above all, his own life have changed.

He went from visiting restaurants on the Strip to cooking for displaced families. From receiving food from local businesses and providing food reviews to watching humanitarian aid sacks parachute from the sky – since Israel limits the entry of goods by land and sea. From showing life in Gaza, which has been under Israeli blockade since 2007, to becoming another displaced person without a safe place to shelter. “I am currently displaced for the fourth time in Khan Younis, living in a place that is not fit for living, as is the case for other displaced people in the Gaza Strip,” laments the young man.

Aside from his work in Gaza, in bombed-out areas overcrowded with families looking for a nonexistent safe place, Shaqoura has also become a voice for the world to denounce and highlight the tremendous difficulties Gazans face in feeding themselves. According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, which includes several UN agencies, 96% of Gaza’s population (about 2.1 million people) suffers from severe or acute hunger, and nearly half a million people face catastrophic conditions, meaning they go entire days without eating.

Humanitarian organisations have reported that Israel uses hunger as a war weapon, in addition to air and ground attacks and the lack of proper medical treatment – all factors that have resulted in nearly 40,000 deaths since October, along with over 90,000 injured and thousands missing among the rubble of buildings.

“Ingredients are not always available. The ones we have come from humanitarian aid or markets, but at high prices. Many ingredients are missing, and I try to find alternatives,” laments Shaqoura. That’s why he unleashes his imagination to navigate shortages and ensure his dishes feed more and more survivors. To achieve his goal, he collaborates with other organizations that provide support, such as Watermelon Relief, created by Palestinian activists displaced by Israeli attacks who self-manage to offer care to people who have lost their homes.

“After I started posting videos, they offered to help me cook by providing ingredients and supplies,” Shaqoura says about his collaboration with this group, which launched an online fundraising campaign to provide everything from food to psychological support for the displaced, especially the youngest.

The nonprofit World Central Kitchen, founded by Spanish chef José Andrés and which in April suffered an attack by the Israeli Army that killed seven of its workers, is another of the allied entities. “We work in collaboration with them in distributing food bags and sometimes use their kitchens for cooking and filming,” explains Shaqoura.

As he admits, he does not cease to distribute food “to as many camps as possible” despite the significant difficulties. In addition to ingredients from humanitarian aid or the severe shortage of fresh products, his videos often show him having to move in donkey-drawn carts, cook in large pots with wood fires, and lack cooking utensils. “I had to go to my aunt’s house to find the cups that remained among the rubble of her kitchen,” the influencer recently narrated and showed in his Instagram stories.

Water scarcity is another major challenge that the cook and the Gaza population faces, and Shaqoura does not hesitate to show it to the world. Before the conflict, 97% of the water was not fit for human consumption, and the blockade imposed by Israel already prevented the entry of materials to develop seawater desalination systems. Now, the situation is even more alarming. According to the United Nations, three out of four people drink contaminated water, and most are forced to wait for hours to obtain this vital resource.

“Since we fled to Khan Younis, we have faced a severe water shortage, so we began to think of all the other families also struggling to get clean water. So we got a water tanker and distributed drinking water to the families,” he says in a video where he is seen distributing water among the crowd, mostly children, who run up to fill their jugs.

Shaqoura faces two challenges. On one hand, he obtains food and other goods for displaced families, on the another, he reports on the devastation of this genocide in the lives of thousands of families, including his own. “We hope that people outside continue talking about us, that we are not forgotten, and that it is known that the Palestinian people are creative and capable of making a mark on this world,” he declares.

He is another survivor and is currently in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. Under these critical circumstances, his wife was expecting their son Nizar. “The period of my wife’s pregnancy was very difficult during the war; there were no available nutritious foods that meet the needs of a pregnant woman, and when some foods were available, the price was very high. Now, after giving birth, the situation is even more difficult,” he explains to this newspaper.

Hunger, like that frost evoked by the poet Miguel Hernández, also preys on newborns and their mothers who struggle to survive amid bombings, terror, and a collapsed healthcare system. It is estimated that there are around 70,000 pregnant women in Gaza, and according to UNICEF, about 20,000 babies have been born since the start of the Israeli offensive on October 7. But, after so many months without sufficient food and in a state of extreme fatigue and at the limit, mothers are so malnourished that they cannot breastfeed, and obtaining formula milk is nearly impossible due to Israel preventing the entry of essential goods.

“We know how to prevent malnutrition, we know how to treat malnutrition, but we are not being given the opportunity to do so. Severe and significant aid restrictions and intense fighting mean that we cannot intervene as we normally would, and as we have in countless emergencies before to save lives,” reports Rachel Cummings, head of the Save the Children team in Gaza.

However, despite the devastation weighing on his shoulders, Shaqoura and his family cling to life. “The moment I held him in my arms, I forgot for a minute everything we were going through! I wish his first breath on earth had been under better circumstances! And that he wouldn’t have to open his eyes for the first time to this scene of destruction,” he wrote when his son was born last May.

This story was originally published in elDiario.es (Spain) and is republished within the Human Journalism Network program, supported by the ICFJ, International Center for Journalists.