The Resilience of Palestinian Jerusalemites amid Deeply Unsettling Times

Throughout March 2026, instead of the usual sounds reverberating across the Old City of Jerusalem in this season—vendor cries, children’s cheers, festive celebrations, spiritual chants, and prayers—weighty, dead silence settled in and blanketed every ancient alley. While the entire Old City souk was completely shut down by the state, the stifling void was only periodically pierced by the wailing siren alarms, tax orders, sudden blasts, and whooshing, whistling missiles.

Not only were the streets empty most of this time, but so were the stomachs of people who were diligently fasting for Ramadan and Lent, which coincided this year.

Fasting signifies a profound spiritual act of devotion, obedience, and self-restraint. It serves to purify the soul, develop patience and self-discipline, and create empathy for the less fortunate.

In Ramadan, among the primary objectives of fasting is to attain taqwa (an Islamic term for God-consciousness), which relates to building a shield: staying invisibly resolute through willpower and patience to foster an intense consciousness.

In Christianity, too, fasting is crucial in the way that it relates to abstinence. Lent is a time of spiritual empowerment and testing. The times of fasting offer the chance for detoxing, starting anew, and resisting urges for the sake of patience.

Such discipline takes individuals back to private piety: Those choosing to fast become intentional in their self-restraint, reducing dependency on comfort, and committing to hold back on impulse control while resisting hunger pangs, lightheartedness, irritability, and difficulty focusing.

It so happened that both Muslims and Christians were fasting during the same time this year. Ramadan started approximately on Wednesday March 18, 2026, as did the first day of Lent–Ash Wednesday, in the Latin calendar. About five days after, the Eastern Orthodox Lent also started.

Ancient wisdom has often recorded how breaking the fast together awakens a shared sense of compassion and collective goodness, reminding the fasters that small acts of patience and generosity ripple out to strengthen the bonds of humanity.

Throughout the sounds of the US–Israel war on Iran, with alerts beeping, sirens squeaking, and rockets hitting, people’s stomachs were also growling with the urge to eat. Observers of Ramadan were awaiting the time for iftar (to break their fast; approximately at 5:40 pm each evening), with many waking up in the wee hours of the morning for suhur. For Christians, too, the fasting continued as they avoided all animal products (some for the entirety of the 50 days, others for 40 days, and some for twice a week) even as most places were shut.

Right at the outset of the war, Israeli authorities clamped a full and absolute closure on Jerusalem’s Old City (except to residents) and its two holiest sites: al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This also mean denying access to the mosque during the last 10 nights of Ramadan (including Laylat al-Qadr, considered the holiest night of the year for Muslims, during which prayer is believed to be better than a thousand months of worship) and the full Holy Week leading into Easter (the entirety of the most special Christian celebrations commemorating the Passion of the Christ and the holy resurrection).

In such difficult times, perhaps the discipline of fasting empowered people to not fret as much; to carry on with their devout prayers even if they could not access their holy sites, at some point as close as possible to them.

Although everything was closed, particularly in the Old City of Jerusalem, the spirit of Ramadan persevered within the homes of people and shared communities. Silently and diligently, people chose to remain resilient, share food, and offer acts of service.

One good example in Jerusalem was the initiative of Beit al-‘Ai’la (the family home). Launched in 2016, this charity event brings together volunteers to prepare home-cooked meals for patients hospitalized with cancer during the month of Ramadan. The humanitarian initiative, founded some years ago by Jerusalemite Rajai Qawasmi, initially began to assist these patients and their companions (mostly from East Jerusalem and elsewhere in the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) by helping them sort out logistics and accompaniment for the often arduous trip to the hospital in Jerusalem. Then, volunteers began to prepare home-cooked food and send it to the kitchen of the Augusta Victoria Hospital, whose administration happily delivered to patients.

The initiative continues today with the leadership of Rajai’s cousin and friend, writer Issa Qawasmi. Community members, including the head chef, Hala Taha, have also had a pivotal role in the initiative.

“Our aim has been to be a source of support for the cancer patients and their companions,” Issa told Jerusalem Story.1 “They generally don’t know for how long they’ll be in the hospital, so we aim to make them feel less isolated by providing them with care and support.”

The initiative provides food for patients and their loved ones across different times of the year. During Ramadan, considered a holy month of giving, the support becomes more direct: The team prepares a little over 70 meals, fruits, and desserts, including for iftar and suhur, every single day for 30 days.

Despite the closures and risks, Beit al-‘Ai’la’s small team managed to meet in the early afternoons each day during the month of Ramadan to prepare about 70 boxes of food, and Issa delivered the boxes to the kitchen of the Augusta Victoria Hospital in his own car. They even recruited students from 32 high schools to participate daily, but the schools had to abort their participation after a short initial stint due to the ongoing situation.

While the challenges were so severe in 2026, yet the team kept at it throughout the holy month. Chef Hala has managed to continue this endeavor for five consecutive years, including this year, with only one or two days missing due to the situation.

Amid the tumultuous times and sad realities on the ground, reflecting on how Hala prepares food with love for over 70 cancer patients and their companions day in and day out during the month of Ramadan is heartwarmingly worthy of chronicling.

For one thing, reaching the Sabreen Association for Artistic Development headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, where the volunteers gathered, was a challenge this year, with movement restrictions and empty roads, not to mention the frequent loud emergency sirens and periodic rockets fired in the sky.

On top of that, most of the volunteers, including the chef, were always fasting. “I would make sure to take it easy with the salt,” Hala explained,2 as her diligent fasting would not allow her to taste the food as she prepared it. “It’s better for the food to have little than too much salt. The first is fixable, but the latter more problematic.”

Hala feels grateful for being able to contribute to her city: “Nowhere in the world compares to Jerusalem,” she insisted. She was raised in ‘Aqbat al-Sheikh Hasan, close to Bab Hutta, inside the Old City, to which she feels very connected.

One of the ways Hala described the blessings of Jerusalem is the act of giving through food: “The meals that are prepared in the holy land have abundance; they somehow end up plentiful and overflowing. After all, guardians, prophets, saints, and divine helpers of all faiths have graced this city.”

Working in Sabreen's small kitchen, which is not by any means designed for formal cooking, could also be intimidating. Yet Hala is clearly confident in her cooking skills and abilities. Now, a mother of four, she learned to cook at age 13, after her mother passed away. She mentioned that her family members, including her late mother and the men in the family, were “historically good at cooking.”

For local Jerusalemites, this is evident: Hala’s son, Tarek, is a renowned chef who won Top Chef Middle East in 2023. Meanwhile, her husband, Ziad, runs “Abu Shukri,” the exquisite hummus and falafel restaurant in Jerusalem’s Christian Quarter (between Station VII and VIII on the Via Dolorosa). “We are skilled in this department and are adept in using the right combinations of herbs and spices,” she said.

Perhaps more importantly, Hala and her family’s cooking are attributed to nafas: the spirit and soul of cooking. An even better term, as she herself described it, would be the word baraka.

As she prepared food, Hala softly murmured flowing prayers full of positive energy: “Allah yiftah al-baraka,” she proceeded in Arabic to what would translate to: “May Allah open the blessings . . . May health and wellness reach upon every heart that will partake in this meal . . . And may we be granted the reward of feeding the hungry and the fasting. Amen.”

Baraka conveys a sense of being intentional in bringing forth the energy of fortune and sacredness, a blessing, a divine favor, and a spiritual presence.

Hala went on to mention the Quranic expression, “Barakna hawlahu,” which translates to: “We have blessed what is around it.” This is attributed to Surat al-Isra’, which gives glory to Prophet Muhammad’s night journey from the Sacred Mosque of Mecca (Masjid al-Haram) to the Farthest Mosque of Jerusalem (Masjid al-Aqsa), the surroundings of which were blessed [as per the text]. In other words, the Old City surrounding al-Aqsa Mosque has a special blessing.

Hala’s words are a reminder of the therapeutic benefits of cooking and of the divine (albeit unseen) abundance that Jerusalem offers for those who wish to see and refuse to unsee its unique and inclusive beauty. Her tenacity to remain grounded and giving stands as a testimony to the radiant force of an unwavering spirit and the refusal to let bitterness or fear take hold.

In this way, the blessing becomes more than abundance; it evolves into ongoing resistance: “You wouldn’t believe it,” Hala said, “but when I cook in the Old City in particular, the food somehow stretches to feed many more people than expected. There is baraka here; it is as if the city itself provides resilience, and somehow, there is always more than enough.”

To fast, cook, share meals, connect, and find lightness amid the deeply unsettling times demonstrates that even when all doors are shut, people’s hearts can remain open. Even when the city is sealed off, people don’t have to be: “In fact,” Hala explained, “the challenges may make us even more open.”

“The difficult and consistent challenges of this city are special, and so is our tenacity, sense of belonging, and endurance. We pray to have the persistence to remain,” she stressed.