Gaza's first food truck brings out the hungry and curious

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Mahmoud al-Hasnat, 28, had hoped to find himself standing in front of a camera while holding a microphone after graduating as a journalist from the Faculty of Information at the Palestine Polytechnic University. Instead, these days, he is standing with his brother Moath, 24, behind the window of a truck they designed and turned into a mobile food caravan they named Karmoshty, which in Arabic means “bite.”

There are several fast food-related professions in the Gaza Strip, but the food truck the Hasnat brothers inaugurated March 28 is the first of its kind in Gaza. It was an emergency response to the high rate of unemployment in Gaza but inspired by practices in Europe. The brothers, proud of their business, no longer despair over opportunities lost.

Mahmoud, adding fried chicken pieces to a sandwich, told Al-Monitor, “I worked in many media and social institutions but under contracts. I never had a steady job, so I suddenly found myself jobless, and this is why we started thinking about a mobile eatery.”

Moath said that the idea came from a show on National Geographic. While watching, they noticed the popularity of trucks in European cities. “I do not deny that I initially felt ashamed, but when I saw how happy people were for us, I felt great satisfaction,” Moath said.