There has been a new tragedy in the Middle East: heat nixed Palestinian efforts to build the world’s longest sandwich:
Palestinians abandoned a quest to build the world’s longest sandwich on Wednesday after health officials told them their 750-meter construction risked rotting in the West Bank summer sun.
Hundreds of volunteers spread a 750-meter bun on tables along a dusty roadside in the West Bank city of Jenin, long a hotspot of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
But the attempt was called off for health reasons before volunteers got a chance to add 180 kg of mortadella meat, 350 kg of tomatoes and 250 kg of green peppers.
Organizers had planned to serve the sandwich to the poor, and said they were aiming to beat a record set in Portugal in 2004 for a 634-meter sandwich.
“We were planning to add the mortadella and stuffing at the last minute to rule out any possibility of rotting,” chef Ahmed Nazzal told Reuters. “There must be a conspiracy against us by other competitors.”
It should be easy for Palestinians to build the longest sandwich since their leaders have so much experience: the late PLO leader Yassir Arafat offered the Israelis and talked baloney for years.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.