Levy: Their tahini passes through the checkpoints quickly and has never been held up for more than a few hours

November 23, 2007 9:31 am henrymunsonjr Gideon Levy, Checkpoints as Breeding Grounds of Terror

Gideon Levy, The tahini trail, Haaretz, November 23, 2007

It started at my supermarket in Ramat Aviv. Suddenly huge wooden pallets piled with raw tahini (known in Hebrew as tahina) appeared in the store. The packaging was old-fashioned, the labels tattered, the graphic design uninspired, the Hebrew riddled with errors. But the taste was marvelous. The telephone number listed on the underside of the plastic jar piqued my curiosity. The dove of peace is not dead, nor even bleeding. More and more jars with doves on them have appeared on the shelves of the supermarket. There is Dove Symbol tahini from Nablus, Peace Dove tahini from Mishor Adumim (a Jewish industrial area in the West Bank), and the tahini I discovered, which the supermarket poster calls Dove Tahini, also from Nablus.

But this week we discovered that the dove-like bird on the blue label is not a dove at all, but a karawan, or sand partridge. Karawan Tahini is my house recommendation; I always take some to my good friend Imad Saba, who is in exile in Holland. This item, probably just about the last Palestinian product sold in Israel - and made in the West Bank’s most confined city - has become a hit. It’s the New Middle East, and we are hot on its trail….

There is no sign at the entrance to the plant: We followed the pungent smells. There are two floors - a basement and a ground floor - each 600 square meters in area, with seven employees, 13 at the height of the season, with steam boilers and millstones. Welcome to Karawan Tahini. This is a fourth-generation sesame enterprise, in a Dickensian setting: a few workers in ragged dress are stirring, mixing, pouring and packaging amid swirling steam saturated with the aroma of tahini. Workers in the plant make an average of NIS 50 a day. Politicians and purveyors of the occupation need not apply….Thanks or not, the tahini has to pass through at least two checkpoints on its way to Israel: one that dominates Nablus, the other being the Taibeh checkpoint next to Tul Karm, at the entrance to Israel. You will not hear a word of criticism or complaint from the Tamams. Their tahini passes through the checkpoints quickly and has never been held up for more than a few hours.

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