As every year, Palestinian Aziza Abu Hamdiya opens the month of Ramadan with a green plate, along with stuffed chicken and her special appetizers, which are famous for their family tables in the city of Hebron (in the south of the West Bank) this month.

Her daughter Fida Abu Hamdiya, who is a researcher in Palestinian food, says that her family used to open Ramadan in green, with the "white" leading his big banquet later.

And "green and white" in the Palestinian table, meaning green mallow or yogurt cooked in the form of mansaf or other recipes, and with them large areas open in Palestine during the month of Ramadan every year.

Green is the master of the trip

In addition to "mallow", Abu Hamdiya offers an "omelette" dish, which is fried discs made of eggs, onions and parsley, as daily appetizers that are unique to Hebron families, especially the old town, from the rest of the Palestinian tables, which consider falafel and hummus as the most important appetizers during the month of Ramadan.

Fidaa tells Al-Jazeera Net that "Al-Khalayleh" does not start the month of Ramadan in white.

That is, foods cooked with curd, because it is the dish designated for banquet, which usually begins in the second week of the month of fasting, and in which milk cooked with meat is served alongside rice, and "green bean stew" is also served as a main dish.

Qatayef after it was fried and put the tar on it, in addition to a little ground pistachio nuts (Al-Jazeera)

Fingers Zainab and Qatayef

While the "Qatayef" dessert is served at the daily Ramadan meals, the people of Hebron present the "Zainab Fingers" dessert made of flour and fried semolina and sweetened at their banquets, given the large number of invitees usually, and the speed of their presentation as well.

"The feast in Ramadan is a behavior to earn the reward of breaking the fast, and not for browning or a long family gathering," says Abu Hamdia.

Congestion on "white"

In contrast to Hebron, the month of fasting begins this year in the city of Nablus and its suburbs in the northern West Bank with a white plate, "Akoub with yogurt". The start of Ramadan coincides with the season of "Akoub", which is a thorny plant that is harvested manually from the plains of the Palestinian valleys. They are fried and cooked in curd with meat or chicken.

In this also, the white man will be the master of the city’s tables at the beginning of Ramadan.

Mansaf is one of the main Palestinian dishes for religious and heritage occasions (Al-Jazeera)

Palestinian rates

On a group called "Palestinian Moderates" on Facebook, which has more than 500 thousand followers, Palestinian women participate in answering the question "white or green?"

Um Ahmad Melitat, from the outskirts of Nablus, says, "We reserve the fresh milk two days in advance due to the high demand and overcrowding, because everyone opens Ramadan with Mansaf or milk dishes."

In the city of Jenin (also in the northern West Bank), the nanny, Amna Jaitawi and her family, receives the month of Ramadan with a plate of cooked milk next to rice.

While the people of central and southern Palestine cook mansaf with jameed, meaning dried sheep's milk, the people of the northern West Bank prepare it with fresh milk, and this is due to the widespread spread of livestock and their manufactured products in the south, while the areas of Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya and even northern Palestine are known as agricultural areas.

Cooked milk is served at Ramadan banquets and Palestinian social occasions (Al Jazeera)

'Green or white' tradition

In Jerusalem, the capital and largest governorate in central Palestine, the "green or white" tradition is also common.

"It is known that many families in the city cook mulukhiya or labneh," meaning yogurt with meat and rice, at the beginning of the fasting month, said Magda Subhi, activist and researcher on Jerusalem heritage.

Subhi tells Al-Jazeera Net, "Ramadan begins in Jerusalem with white or green dishes, optimistic that it will be a month of goodness and blessing."

But it is postponed to his subsequent days.

Inverted postponed!

Al-Maqlouba is known as the lady of the traditional Palestinian dishes, which is a dish of cooked rice with meat or chicken and vegetables. In the past ten years, she entered into the diary of the confrontation with the Israeli occupation, when the Jerusalemite marabouts resorted to presenting them to people at the gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and for those forbidden from praying in it under the orders of the occupation in particular.

Chopped green mallow is the lady of the Ramadan table in Palestine (Al-Jazeera)

Green in Galilee

In northern Palestine occupied in 1948, fresh green mallow opens the diary of the month of fasting, and as Yumna Ghanayem from the city of Sakhnin in the Galilee says, "We have a decades-old tradition, all the houses of the neighborhood smell of molokhia at the beginning of the month of Ramadan."

Sakhnin is close to Saffuriyya, the Palestinian town displaced in 1948, and whose residents who sought refuge in Syria and Lebanon, then to European countries, are famous for eating "mulukhiya". In the town's treats, it is reported that the people of Saffuriyya drink molokhiya in cups for their fondness.

Besides white and green, vegetable soup or freekeh makes an essential ingredient on the Ramadan table.

But in the tradition, Umm Ali from Ramallah says, "Grandmothers and mothers used to serve soup made of healthy lentils, so that we would remain in our full health from the first to the last day of Ramadan."

In the refugee camps in the West Bank, some families start the month of Ramadan with grape leaves, mahshi, or upside down (communication sites)

In the camp .. is

In the refugee camps in the West Bank, we find different patterns. As Fida Abu Hakima, the owner of a home restaurant in Jalazoun camp (north of Ramallah), told Al-Jazeera Net, “People in the camps came from separate areas and carried different dishes, so some families may start the month of Ramadan with grape leaves and stuffing. Or al-Maqluba, and another that begins with maftoul if the weather is cold, because the dish (white and green) is known in cities and villages more than in the camps. "

Abu Hakima, whose family was displaced from the village of Annaba near Ramla in the Nakba of 1948, says that her relatives brought with them Maftoul eaters "granules made of flour and crushed wheat and cooked with meat or chicken", while her neighbors brought refugees from the Lod region, a dish of dried milk with bulgur. The romania dish is cooked with lentils.