Palestinian refugees have settled in the Philippines and are bringing their cultural foods with them.
A special Palestinian food pop-up event is wrapping up at primetime in Quezon City, Philippines. Organized by Little Gaza, a community of Palestinians and Palestinian-Filipino refugees recently displaced from Gaza, the event is taking place on a humid March afternoon in Manila. The aroma of spicy Palestinian food fills the common area of the apartment building where the newly resettled refugees live.
Pop-up chefs cater to a never-ending line of diners eager to sample their handcrafted dishes.Kabsa, Maqlubachicken Musakanand other delicacies to show solidarity with Palestine. Each dish costs up to 150 Philippine pesos (about $2.70), with proceeds going to Little Gaza's Kitchen, a food business run by Palestinian refugee families trying to rebuild their lives in the Philippines after the Israeli government's violent occupation.
With 16 households sharing 9 kitchens, Little Gaza Kitchen hosts and participates in occasional events, such as a halal food bazaar held during Ramadan, where food offerings sell out quickly. Outside of these occasional events, Little Gaza Kitchen operates as a food delivery service, with all meals cooked in home.
As the sun sets, a group of Filipino Muslims and Palestinian refugees gather on an apartment rooftop for iftar, the sunset meal that breaks the Ramadan fast. They sit cross-legged on the carpet and pass out containers of chicken biryani in preparation for prayer. While the adults pray, the children play loudly and with abandon. Watching them play made me wonder what it means to grow up in Palestine, and what it must mean for these families to be forced to rebuild their lives all over again.
The difficult journey home
The Philippines has been a haven for more than 170 Palestinians since November 2023, 70 of whom currently live in a residential area in Quezon City known as Little Gaza.
Since October 2023, Palestinians have been fleeing Gaza to escape Israel's genocidal military invasion. At the moment, the only exit point for escaping Gaza is Egypt, but most of Egypt's borders are closed. Only a very small number of people can enter the country: foreign passport holders, the injured, and those who can afford economic refuge.
There are currently around 5 million Palestinian refugees. Jordan hosts the largest number of Palestinian refugees, with over 2 million, followed by Syria with 584,000 and Lebanon with 491,000. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East runs the refugee camps, with a further 19 camps in the West Bank.
The link between the Gaza refugees and the Philippines is the Filipino-Palestinian migrants who have migrated and settled in Palestine. There are more than 200 Filipinos living in Palestine, of which 137 live in Gaza. Most of the Filipinos living in Gaza are women married to Palestinians and are dependents of Palestinians. Since October, the Philippine government has been encouraging them to leave Gaza with their families.
Yasmin, a science teacher who fled Gaza with her children in February, is now settled in the Philippines. Yasmin was born in the Philippines and holds dual Palestinian and Filipino citizenship. When she was forced to leave Gaza, the Philippine embassy offered her a pathway back home.
Yasmin reluctantly left Gaza for the sake of her children, a decision common among Palestinian-Filipino women married to Palestinian spouses. “I didn't want to leave. My husband and father were [were] “We are still there… we were not allowed to evacuate,” Yasmin said.
Refugees who only have Palestinian nationality must pay the Egyptian government $5,000 to leave Gaza – other escape routes cost twice that much – and the cost is an obstacle for many Gazans, including Yasmin's husband and father.
“You know, we have a great life in Gaza,” she says, “we have a beautiful house, we have a car, we have a great life. I'm a science teacher at the United Nations school in Gaza, and then the war started.”
Initial assistance from the Philippine government was limited, forcing Gaza refugees to rely on community-based assistance to maintain their livelihoods.
The Moro Palestinian Cooperation Team (MPACT) has been helping Little Gaza deal with administrative issues and pay monthly bills. Camila Dimaporo Manalao, one of MPACT's co-founders, said the seven-person organization was born out of the need to help displaced Gaza residents.
“My husband and I, along with five other people, built and manage Little Gaza,” Manarao said. “When we realized how important the job was and the weight of the responsibility and commitment, we agreed to come together and form the Moro Palestine Cooperation Team.”
The team raised funds to cover the monthly rent of $5,090 (280,000 Philippine pesos) for 16 families, as well as other expenses such as water and electricity, making Little Gaza Kitchen a viable option for supporting the refugee community.
Diversity of International Solidarity
Other grassroots activists in Manila, many of them artists, have also rallied to support the Palestinian refugee community. When Little Gaza's Kitchen needed to leverage social media and branding to attract customers, artist and grassroots activist Didi Nyunyu offered to design logos and menus for each business free of charge.
As a person with a disability, Nyunyu feels more at home with these solidarity actions than protests or rallies. Her chronic radiculopathy makes it difficult, even dangerous, for her to take part in public demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians. “Even among my peers, I often feel like I'm an afterthought,” she says, because there is an assumption that the real fight takes place in the streets.
Working with Palestinian refugees to brainstorm and design brands for their food businesses is much more achievable for Nyunyu. “It’s nice to find this little place in this movement,” Nyunyu says.
When designing Little Gaza Kitchen, Nyunyu wondered how she could make each logo unique. “What if I differentiated each family with a color?” Because Little Gaza is starting to build a tradition of bringing Palestinian cuisine to the Philippines, Nyunyu was forced to go in a more personal direction. “Let’s draw the faces of these people to make it more Filipino!”
With the families' consent, sketches of them were used as the logos for each food company, which Nyunyu sees as a more human approach.[We chose] Because it's a logo of people's faces [customers] Identifiable [the families]…If we bring this even closer, [Filipino] The aim is to connect people to the kitchen and bring them closer to the people in the kitchen.”
Desire to return home
Most of the Palestinian refugees I spoke to hoped that a permanent ceasefire would allow them to return home.
“Palestinians own the land,” Yasmin said, adding, “And we hope to go back there when the war is over. We grew up there, we have memories, we have relatives and loved ones there. We really want to go back there.”
Yasmin is grateful that the Philippines has accepted her and other refugees, but she also hopes for a future in Palestine. “I'm very grateful to the management here. They've helped us in many ways,” she said. “I'm really grateful, but… [are] I was really homesick.”
As the world continues to bear witness to Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestine, we hope that the world will also see various expressions of solidarity to a liberated Palestine from around the world, including from a resilient Little Gaza.
Find out more about Little Gaza's Kitchen here. Official Facebook Page. You can also donate To Little Gaza Kitchen.
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Gabes Torres
is a psychotherapist, organizer and artist. Her work focuses on anti-colonial approaches and practices in the field of mental health, as well as anti-slavery organizing on a global scale. Most of her work can be found on her official website www.gabestorres.com and on social media platforms such as Instagram. |
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