Nablus, West Bank - Hope returned Saturday to the northern West Bank city of Nablus, devastated after a decade of tight Israeli military blockade, as local cooks sought to enter the Guinness Book of Records with a huge plate of the kanefeh pastry. The plate of kanafeh, made of red dyed shreds of pastry noodles covering sweetened cheese and sprinkled with ground pistachios soaked with sugar syrup, weighed 1,750 kilograms, 400 kilograms more than the needed weight to enter the Guinness book.
The plate was more than 75 metres long and one metre wide. An estimated 800 kilograms of cheese were used in preparing the Nablus pastry, according to the organizer of the event, Muhannad Rabi.
He said that it took 150 local makers of kanafeh 25 days of preparation and 36 hours of constant work to prepare the plate.
Rabi expressed hope that this event will place Nablus, a city of 200,000, once again on the map as the capital of the Palestinian economy as Israel gradually eases the blockade placed on the city since the end of 2000.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad unveiled the plate, part of a month-long Nablus shopping festival event intended to revive Nablus' shattered economy. Several foreign diplomats attended the ceremony, including Jake Wallace, the US Consul General in Jerusalem.
Israel had considered Nablus a hotbed of Palestinian militant groups, particularly al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the ruling Fatah movement in the West Bank.
Al-Aqsa Brigades started up in Nablus in 2000 and then spread to the rest of the West Bank and to the Gaza Strip. It was responsible for several suicide attacks against Israelis that left hundreds dead and wounded.
Israel responded with a fierce military campaign against Nablus militants, waging daily military incursions into the city killing and arresting hundreds of its militants and residents.
The Israeli military operations, closure and the chaos caused by the local militants forced most of the Nablus businesses either to shut down or relocate to the capital of the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah, 50 kilometres to the south, where movement was easier and business was thriving.
However, since Fayyad took office in his first government two years ago, he vowed to end the activities of armed militants and the chaos in the West Bank cities and restore law and order to them, an Israeli requirement for easing its blockade.
Israel eased the blockade on Nablus last week after it was convinced that law and order had been restored to the city and the militants had been reined in.
