2006-02-22<\/p>\n
Palestinian brewery to launch ‘Hamas’ near beer<\/p>\n
Beermaker decides to develop non-alcoholic beer brandished with label that matches
\nHamas’s trademark color.<\/p>\n
By Kerry Sheridan – TAYBEH, West Bank Like any good entrepreneur, Palestinian
\nbeermaker Nadim Khoury knew that adaptation would be key to his brewery’s survival under
\na government led by the Islamists of Hamas.<\/p>\n
So anticipating the hardliners’ rise to power in January’s general election, Khoury decided to
\ndevelop a new product – a non-alcoholic microbrew brandished with a label that coordinates
\nperfectly with Hamas’s trademark color.<\/p>\n
“I figured why not have a green label so it will match?” said Khoury, who runs the Taybeh
\nBrewing Company, the only brewery in the Palestinian territories. “All customers will notice
\nthe green for the Hamas flag.”<\/p>\n
The alcohol-free version of Taybeh beer, with a label inscribed only in Arabic and whose
\nname means “delicious,” is to be released this summer and will target the “local market,” he
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
Non-alcoholic beer is already popular in a number of conservative Gulf Arab countries which
\nofficially ban booze sales.<\/p>\n
The lucrative market potential was highlighted by a deal four years ago which saw Egypt’s
\nlargest brewer of “near-beer,” Al-Ahram Beverages, bought by Heineken for 280 million
\ndollars.<\/p>\n
Khoury says he will start small with his new beer, maybe only a few hundred bottles at first,
\nbut he has big dreams for his brewing factory in the hilltop village of Taybeh, a historically
\nChristian town of about 1,300 people near Ramallah in the West Bank.<\/p>\n
A sense of homeland pride and the family’s ability to invest more than one million dollars
\nspurred Nadim, who was born in Taybeh, to return after two decades in the United States in
\norder to build the brewery shortly after the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993.<\/p>\n
Now in its 11th year of business, Khoury said the brewery sells the equivalent of about 1.2
\nmillion pints per year, though its peak output was more than twice that in 2000 prior to the
\noutbreak of the second intifada against Israeli occupation.<\/p>\n
Violence was bad for business, and the intifada brought a wave of harsher regulations in
\nmany Palestinian cities.<\/p>\n
Khoury hasn’t been able to sell his beer in the Gaza Strip for years, since militants torched
\nthe home of one of his distribution outlets and radical Islamists effectively made selling
\nalcohol impossible throughout the crowded territory.<\/p>\n
But Khoury hopes attitudes will change with his new non-alcoholic beer.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to smuggle my beer in Palestine. I believe I have a right to sell mine (in the Gaza
\nStrip),” said Khoury, an unabashed nationalist who touts his beer factory as a boon to the
\nPalestinian people and their economy.<\/p>\n
“Every time we sell a bottle of beer it goes toward building the state of Palestine,” said
\nKhoury.<\/p>\n
Khoury says his first name Nadim means “your friend who sits at the bar with you, your
\ndrinking buddy,” and his chief product is Taybeh Golden beer, though he also makes a light
\nversion and a dark beer.<\/p>\n
The Taybeh brews are concocted from four natural ingredients — malted barley, hops, yeast
\nand pure spring water. Each bottle sells for around one dollar.<\/p>\n
The gentle, amber-colored Taybeh Golden is sold in parts of Israel, the West Bank, Britain
\nand Germany.<\/p>\n
However, among secular Muslims in the area who do drink alcohol, not all are devoted fans
\nof its mellow taste.<\/p>\n
“It’s okay. It’s good,” shrugged one Arab-Israeli taxi driver in Jerusalem, who admitted he
\nhadn’t drunk any Taybeh in at least two years.<\/p>\n
A waiter at a bar in occupied East Jerusalem said: “I prefer Irish whiskey. Jameson.”<\/p>\n
Hamas leaders, who now dominate parliament, have not made clear whether or not they will
\nseek to impose conservative sharia law which would impose a wider ban on alcohol.<\/p>\n
Khoury remains optimistic.<\/p>\n
“I think they (Hamas) are very smart, very educated. I believe they will think twice before they
\ndo anything to hurt our business.”<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.middle-east-online.com\/english\/?id=15816<\/p>\n
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2006-02-22 Palestinian brewery to launch ‘Hamas’ near beer Beermaker decides to develop non-alcoholic beer brandished with label that matches Hamas’s trademark color. By Kerry Sheridan – TAYBEH, West Bank Like any good entrepreneur, Palestinian beermaker Nadim Khoury knew that adaptation would be key to his brewery’s survival under a government led by the Islamists of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1401],"ppma_author":[936],"class_list":["post-5023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-hamas"],"authors":[{"term_id":936,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"sambahour","display_name":"Sam Bahour","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/bca109c333bf6d8ae807746dd512adde46265d37c923f6cd0fc4aab437f8e9aa?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7793,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023\/revisions\/7793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5023"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}