Safeguarding Traditional Palestinian Food Culture: The Case of the Arab American Play Food and Fadwa*

Scholarly literature on the relationship between food and nationalism has achieved further momentum with the ascendancy of food and foodways as cultural heritage onto the international arena by way of such global institutions as The European Union and UNESCO. However, extant literature that explores how national claims to certain food items and practices are inextricably linked with wider, complex economic, cultural, and political issues is marked by sketchy references to food wars between Israel and Palestine which are devoid of a comprehensive analysis of their true nature in the context of Israel/Palestine. This article aims to critically examine in the Arab American play Food and Fadwa (2012) the web of relations between food and nationalism in Israel/Palestine, with particular focus on safeguarding traditional Palestinian food culture in a settler-colonial context. Firstly, I elaborate upon the specific context under which Palestinian and Israeli claims to certain food items inextricably linked to claims making to land and history. Then, I attempt to demonstrate the conceptual gap between food as cultural heritage in the context of Palestine/Israel and food as heritage in the context of 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Finally, I offer culinary sumud in Food and Fadwa as a daily, dynamic, constantly shifting, bottom-top, and multi-level strategy and praxis for safeguarding and sustaining Palestinian food culture against Israel’s culinary colonialism, and as a “non-listed” expression of food heritagization. Such an approach opens up new avenues for alternative under-standings and expressions of food other than those institutionalized conceptions to be found in the lists, inven-tories, and nominations of the 2003 Convention. Therefore, Food and Fadwa has much to say about safeguarding food culture in the context of Palestine/Israel.