From feast to survival: The ‘fake’ makloubeh and fattah of a starving Gaza

Beside a makeshift firewood stove, in a classroom that has served as their home for the past year, Um Kamal Ubeid gently feeds her one-year-old grandson, Kareem.

The dish is simple: bread soaked in tea, but for Palestinians in Gaza, it has become a lifeline amid extreme scarcity.

Known locally as tea fattah, the modest meal is long associated with Gaza’s darkest times, like Israeli offensives and prolonged blockades.

Now, with rice, grains and tinned food all exhausted under an ongoing total Israeli siege, it is all the Ubeid family have left to survive on.

“I don’t exactly remember the first time I had tea fattah, but I was around 14 during the early years of the blockade and the 2008–2009 war,” said Kareem’s father, Kamal Ubeid, 32, speaking to Middle East Eye.

Read more: From feast to survival: The ‘fake’ makloubeh and fattah of a starving Gaza