The West Bank brewery battling Israeli blocks to export uncommon Palestinian beer to the UK | EUROtoday

In a grainy black-and-white safety video, three masked, club-wielding figures smash up a gray automotive on a residential avenue.

It was 7.40pm on a quiet Tuesday night within the Christian city of Taybeh within the occupied West Bank, round 10 miles by street to the bustling administrative capital of Ramallah.

Nadim Khoury, the 65-year-old founding father of the West Bank’s first brewery located within the city, says his household has lived there for 600 years. “There is no way that I will go anywhere,” he says undaunted, talking the day after the automotive assault.

But settler assaults are simply one in all a lot of obstacles, together with Israeli export controls and a heavily-damaged vacationer business, which have led to a 70 per cent collapse in gross sales of Taybeh beer because the Hamas-led October 7 assaults and Israel’s subsequent navy campaigns.

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“Doing business in Palestine,” explains Nadim, “is not like doing business in any other part of the world”.

He began brewing beer in a Boston dorm room within the US in 1982 and arrange the brewery along with his brother, David, in 1994, positioned within the West Bank’s solely all-Christian city.

It is now run by his daughter Madees Khoury, the Middle East’s solely feminine brewmaster.

In current years, gross sales amongst locals have dropped considerably. Palestinians have been financially squeezed since October 7, with tens of 1000’s having their working permits in Israel revoked.

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The area’s vacationer sector, which Nadim says is how they acquire most of their enterprise, has additionally been ravaged in consequence.

In spring 2024, the Palestinian tourism ministry stated a mean of 278,000 vacationers per 30 days visited the West Bank and East Jerusalem between January and October 2023. In the months following, numbers plummeted to lower than one per cent.

Tourism has partially recovered however numbers are nonetheless decrease than earlier than, in response to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

Taybeh’s exports, together with to Britain, Germany, France, the US and Canada, have grow to be more and more vital – however its efforts are hampered by Israeli checkpoint delays, allow necessities, and restricted street use for Palestinians.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says there are 849 “movement obstacles” in place within the West Bank as of May 2025.

Palestinians are sometimes stranded for hours when roads are closed, with the company stating Israeli restrictions “entrench territorial and social fragmentation, and contribute to worsening humanitarian conditions”.

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The Israeli navy says safety operations within the West Bank are carried out “in order to provide security to all residents of the area”, and that there are “dynamic checkpoints and efforts to monitor movement in different areas in the region”.

It says the declare that it deliberately restricts the on a regular basis lives of Palestinians is “entirely unfounded”.

For Taybeh brewery, proscribing motion can forestall total shipments from efficiently leaving the Israeli ports of Ashdod and Haifa.

Closures of the Allenby or King Hussein Bridge between the occupied West Bank and Jordan additionally pose main issues.

Meanwhile, settler assaults on the spring which offers water to Taybeh and 18 different cities limits the brewery’s manufacturing, it says.

“These settlers, they’re criminals. They come, they vandalise, they attack the town and just leave. We’re in an open prison, we’re under occupation and we can’t defend ourselves,” says Madees.

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Madees says the brewery has “no control over anything, we don’t have our own roads, we have no authority to help us if we face any challenges with exporting”.

But the family-run enterprise, stated to be the primary micro-brewery within the Middle East, has dedicated to persevering with its restricted exports.

Beer from its unique West Bank brewery is offered in Akub, a Palestinian restaurant in West London, whereas it has additionally partnered with Glasgow-based brewery Brewgooder to supply Sun & Stone Lager, which is offered in Co-op shops throughout the UK.

Keeping the enterprise working, Madees says, is “our peaceful way of resistance to the occupation and to these settler attacks”.