Abbas: "The theft of everything connected to Palestinian heritage and attributing it to Israel is a miserable attempt and nothing more"
Headline: “'Sahara Palace’ – a restaurant that is fighting the occupation’s falsification”
“Despite the challenges that it is dealing with due to the incessant Israeli attempts to steal everything Palestinian, the ‘Sahara Palace’ restaurant in the town of Nein inside the 1948 territories (i.e., Israel) is continuing to stick to the heritage foods.
The restaurant’s owner, chef Nashat Abbas, is called ‘the chef of the Arabs’ – not because he is one of the best cooks in the Interior (i.e., Palestinian term for Israel), but because he focuses on foods with a clear Palestinian nature and on the produce of the land.
An example of this is grape leaves, which have become the most prominent dish in his restaurant, and through which he stands in competition against the largest and even the best restaurants.
Abbas said: ‘You cannot falsify the Palestinian food and attribute it to any other cuisine, particularly the Israeli cuisine, because until today they have not succeeded in formulating their own cuisine (sic., Israeli cuisine is comprised of Jewish food from the various Jewish communities).’
Regarding how Israel recently marketed grape leaves as Israeli in the 2021 Miss Universe competition that was held in Eilat (sic., refers to contestants visiting the Tafadalu: Rahat Bedouin Experience where they wore Bedouin clothing and made Bedouin food; there was no claim it was Israeli), he responded: ‘The theft of everything connected to the [Palestinian] heritage and attributing it to Israel is a miserable attempt and nothing more, because a Palestinian hand is the one that prepares the food, and not one that is foreign to Palestinian cuisine.’ …
He added: ‘Palestinian cuisine has roots going back hundreds of years (sic., the Palestinians have no history prior to the modern period), in contrast to the Israelis who have brought nothing new. In order to have a cuisine, you have to have roots in this blessed land.’”