DETROIT - The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is among the most sensitive and lasting issues in global politics. The 68-year war continues to spark debates among politicians, organizations and local citizens throughout the world.
And it has led one Metro Detroiter to try to join the two sides through food.
Mana Heshmati started Peace Meal Kitchen, a gastro-diplomacy pop-up restaurant in Detroit, to gather people around a table, sharing food and exchanging cultural ideas. Gastro-diplomacy is the idea of using food to bridge gaps between different cultures and people.
"It inspired me to explore more about not just misrepresented or underrepresented cultures but a little more about the different cultures and where they share not just food but the sharing of cultures across regions," Heshmati said.
Her Persian background inspired her to shed awareness on subjects often misrepresented. At each pop-up, she collects donations for nonprofits.
She decided donations from her dinner at the Urban Consulate, called "Politics of food between Israel and Palestine," would go toward the American Friends of the Parents Circle-Families Forum, an organization sharing the human side of the conflict.
Heshmati said food helps bring people together when discussing difficult topics.
Aziz Abu Sarah, a guest speaker at a recent dinner, highlighted similarities between Israel and Palestine that belie the two sides' political tensions. He said food is thought of as something that brings people together, but can also divide them in a conflict because they don't want to attribute dishes to the other side.
"You never hear a Jordanian say, 'Wait a second, hummus is ours, it's not Palestinian,' because we're not in conflict with each other," Abu Sarah said. However, hummus becomes a topic of conflict for Israelis and Palestinians because, "You start appropriating things and say this belongs to my culture and heritage," he added.
Abu Sarah is a National Geographic explorer and cultural educator, TED fellow and a Palestinian peace activist who has managed various conflict resolution projects across the Middle East.
But he can still be surprised by culinary origins. It wasn't until Abu Sarah had lunch at a restaurant called Dr. Shakshuka in the southern part of Tel Aviv with a Jewish business partner that he realized that Shakshuka, a popular dish he had grown up believing to be Palestinian, has Jewish roots.
"I grew up 100 percent sure it was a Palestinian dish," Abu Sarah said.
Shakshuka, a common vegetarian dish in the region, is made of eggs, tomatoes, onions, peppers and cumin. It is originally a Turkish dish with meat, but Tunisian Jews who moved to Israel eliminated the meat. Palestinians picked it up because of its similarity toward traditional Arabic dishes.
Abu Sarah and business partner Scott Cooper run a tourism company called MEJDI Tours, a venture aimed at sharing values among many cultures, religions and nationalities that unite people.
He said his experiences with a mixed staff of various religions and backgrounds pushes him to encourage more Israelis and Palestinians to engage in joint ventures.
"If you can encourage people to do business together, you're changing the whole community," he said.
Other dishes served: Jerusalem salad; tabouli; maqluba, a rice and eggplant dish; mujadara, a rice dish with lentils and onions; kousa mahshi, a stuffed zucchini dish; knafeh, phyllo and cheese; watermelon, halloumi and tea.
While food has the uncanny ability to bring people of all walks of life together, no culinary alliance and crossover has been able to resolve the daunting issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The question of whether of a one- or two-state solution is more plausible.
Abu Sarah concurred a two-state solution isn't his favorite, but said it has potential if it means ending violence and occupation.
"I think we should live together," he said. "We are much closer together than we think and we have so much we can do together."
Palestinians and Israelis connect on elements such as healthcare, he said. Hospitals in Israel take in Palestinian citizens and residents of Israel - not including the West Bank - and are cared for by doctors from both states.
When Abu Sarah needed medical treatment six years ago, he said his doctor sent him to the best oncologist in Israel, but had both an Arab and Jewish doctor operate on him.
"It's possible, even in the midst of horrible situations, you still can see we can live together or work together," he said. "You will never have a world with no conflict. It's about how we manage and resolve conflicts in our lives."
In education, however, Israelis and Palestinians remain segregated, which leaves little room for learning and working with people who are different from one another, Abu Sarah said.
During his time in Hebrew school, he would grill kebab meat at tailgates and was initially teased for doing something out of the ordinary. However, once people tasted his food, they wanted more and it brought many of them together, he said.
"Being in that classroom was important for me because it knocked down that wall of hatred, of fear," he said. "Ten minutes of face-to-face meeting with somebody you saw as an enemy can change your perception about them." he said, noting a study done by New York University and the University of California at Berkeley.
He pointed out that aside from the physical checkpoints and walls separating the territories, Israelis and Palestinians often create checkpoints in their minds and hearts, thus hindering abilities to see each other as humans.
"There is no need to always be right if it's not going to help at all," Abu Sarah said. "It's not about just us, it's about justice."