Palestinian Breakfast: What Is on the Table and How to Make It

A Palestinian breakfast is a spread of small shared plates rather than one dish: warm bread, olive oil and za'atar for dipping, labneh, hummus, falafel, eggs, white cheese, olives, tomatoes and cucumbers, with sweet tea. Everyone eats from the same plates, tearing bread and scooping with it instead of using cutlery.

On a workday it can be as small as bread, oil and za'atar. On a Friday or when guests are staying, the table fills up. This guide goes through what each Palestinian breakfast food is and how to put the spread together at home. For lunch and dinner dishes, see our guide to Palestinian cuisine.

Bread, olive oil and za'atar: the center of the table

The simplest Palestinian breakfast is three things. You tear a piece of warm flatbread, dip it in olive oil, then press it into a dish of za'atar so the mix sticks. Zaytoun, a company that imports olive oil from Palestinian farmers, describes exactly this as the way to start the day with a taste of Palestine.

Za'atar is a blend of dried wild thyme or related herbs with sumac, toasted sesame seeds and salt. Britannica notes there is no single recipe; families and shops each mix their own. The olive oil matters as much as the herb. In a farming household it comes from the family's own trees, pressed in the autumn harvest.

Palestinian breakfast foods, dish by dish

These are the plates you are most likely to find. None is compulsory: families put out what is in the house.

• Labneh: yogurt strained until thick enough to spread, tart and creamy, served in a shallow dish with olive oil poured over it.
• Hummus: cooked chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon juice, garlic and salt, finished with a pool of olive oil. Eaten warm or at room temperature.
• Falafel: balls of ground raw chickpeas, onion, garlic, parsley and spices, deep-fried and eaten fresh.
• Eggs: hard-boiled, soft-boiled or fried in olive oil. Scrambled or fried eggs are often dusted with sumac.
• White cheese: brined cheeses such as Nabulsi cheese, named for the city of Nablus. They are salty and firm.
• Olives and pickles: green and black olives cured at home, with pickled vegetables.
• Tomatoes and cucumbers: sliced or chopped into a simple salad with olive oil and lemon.
• Fava beans: stewed and mashed with lemon, garlic and olive oil, a dish known across the Arab world as ful.
• Something sweet: jam, or halawa, a dense sesame confection, to finish the meal.

Ka'ak al-Quds: the breakfast bread of Jerusalem

Ka'ak al-Quds, Jerusalem ka'ak, is a long, oval ring of bread covered in sesame seeds. Vendors sell it from wooden carts in the streets of the Old City in the morning. The Smithsonian Folklife Festival's recipe notes that Palestinians agree the ka'ak baked in Jerusalem tastes better than any made elsewhere, perhaps because of the old wood-fired ovens.

The Bethlehem chef Fadi Kattan writes that a morning visit to Jerusalem is not complete without a ka'ak, two oven-baked eggs and a twist of paper filled with za'atar. The bread is split and filled like a sandwich, with the eggs and za'atar, or with falafel, labneh or Nabulsi cheese.

The other breakfast bread worth knowing is manaeesh: flatbread spread with za'atar and olive oil before baking, so the topping cooks into the dough.

What do Palestinians drink at breakfast?

Tea. It is black, sweet and served hot in small glasses, usually with fresh mint leaves or dried sage in the pot. Coffee comes after the meal rather than with it: a small cup of strong Arabic or Turkish-style coffee to finish.

How to make a Palestinian breakfast at home

You can put a good version on the table in about twenty minutes, because most of it is assembling rather than cooking. This serves four.

• 1. Warm 4 to 6 flatbreads or pitas in the oven and wrap them in a cloth to keep them soft.
• 2. Pour good extra virgin olive oil into one small bowl and za'atar into another, side by side.
• 3. Spread labneh in a shallow dish, make a dip in the middle with the back of a spoon and fill it with olive oil. If you cannot buy labneh, strain plain full-fat yogurt with a pinch of salt through a cloth in the fridge overnight.
• 4. Do the same with hummus, bought or homemade, and add a pinch of sumac or paprika.
• 5. Boil or fry one egg per person. Sprinkle fried eggs with sumac.
• 6. Slice tomatoes and cucumbers, and set out olives and a piece of white cheese such as feta if you cannot find Nabulsi cheese.
• 7. Brew black tea with a handful of fresh mint, sweeten it, and bring everything to the table at once.

Why breakfast matters, and what it looks like in Gaza now

This is a meal about being together. One writer who stayed with his wife's Palestinian family described waking each morning to the smell of pita baking, with falafel and hummus made from scratch and the whole household gathered around the table. The food is humble, and the point is that it is shared.

For many families in Gaza that table is not possible at present. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) snapshot published in July 2026 found that more than 1.2 million people in Gaza, 59 percent of the population, faced crisis-level food insecurity or worse between mid-April and June 2026, and that food aid rations were too small to support an adequate and varied diet. Bread, oil, eggs and fresh vegetables are exactly the things that become hard to find.

Fight for Palestine funds food parcels and hot meals through local partner teams. Our Gaza food aid page explains how that works, and you can give through the food assistance campaign or the main donate page.