Palestinian Oktoberfest
As long as we’re posting encouraging reports, here’s one from the West Bank about an Oktoberfest in the village of Taybeh– sponsored by the local brewery.
And yes, Taybeh is a Christian village, but I’m sure the festival attracted more than just Christians. And the Palestinian Authority made no effort to stop it. Imagine if someone tried to organize an event like that in Hamas-controlled Gaza.
“This is the other side of the coin,” [Taybeh mayor and brewery co-owner David] Khoury said of the two-day festival held this weekend outside his office. “It shows political freedom and democracy. It is resisting occupation by showing that we can grow the economy and build it.”
It’s hard to argue with that kind of resistance. It also happens to be one of the most powerful forms of Palestinian resistance at this point– vastly more effective than Qassam rockets or suicide bombings.
It is a theme that is being heard more often among Palestinian officials and businesspeople these days. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has issued a two-year plan to build the institutions needed for a Palestinian state and has argued that Palestinians should work toward that goal as if Israel were no longer present in the West Bank, rather than wait for an uncertain peace process to change the facts on the ground.
…..
The brewery was started in 1995 by David Khoury and his brother Nadim, who had returned from the United States with his head full of ideas about hops and German beer-purity laws as well as his own recipes. They almost went broke during the intifada that erupted in 2000, and while never directly challenged by Islamist groups, they feared that the enterprise would be pushed to the fringes of Palestinian society.That has changed. The brewery now turns a profit, the beer is widely available at restaurants in the West Bank and Israel, and the Oktoberfest, now in its fifth year, is helping brand the town as a once-a-year destination.
Taybeh Beer “has caught on in Japan and been franchised for production in Germany.”
I haven’t seen it for sale here in the US, but if I do, I’ll give it a try.
Comments
| 6 October 2009, 5:29 pm |
It’s hard to argue with that kind of resistance.
Growing a Palestinian economy is not “resistance”. Indeed, doing it well requires cooperation with Israelis.
| 6 October 2009, 5:32 pm |
It is resisting occupation by showing that we can grow the economy and build it
Bollocks! It is a fact that Israel has loosened controls over West Bank over the last year and Blair has commented on how the West Bank economy has picked-up since relative calm has returned to West Bank with hardly any suicide bombings and attacks resulting in fewer Israeli incursions.
I remember from a few months ago the announcement of a new modern shopping centre in a Palestinian town as evidence of a grwoing and improving economy. Its NOT resistance that has led to these improvements but the realisation taht resistance and terrorism don’t pay. Its the opposite of this politically inspired quote.
| 6 October 2009, 5:41 pm |
Growing a Palestinian economy is not “resistance”. Indeed, doing it well requires cooperation with Israelis.
I’m thinking in terms of resistance to the eternal status quo with regard to Israel and the Palestinians– which lots of people seem willing to accept these days. And there are plenty of Israelis who are pleased to support this kind of resistance. Nothing contradictory about cooperating with them.
| 6 October 2009, 5:51 pm |
But Gene, that’s the whole point: it is not “resistance” as that term is – I would say – universally understood. Precisely the opposite: it is resistance to the PALESTINIAN way of doing things and ACCEPTANCE of what Israelis – whether doves or hawks – have been wanting them to do.
| 6 October 2009, 6:10 pm |
Great. Lets have more of this resistance. Soon they’ll be building and constructing and selling and working and buying and living…..
If the PAs want to get even with Israel, let them live well. Of course, that’s what Israel has been suggesting all along.
If the PAs don’t watch out, they’ll soon be a partner for peace!
| 6 October 2009, 6:26 pm |
An established economy should be the best argument against intifada and uproar, however don’t hold your breath – the Palestinians were enjoying their period of highest economic prosperity when they instituted the first intifada.
However polls find a far higher desire for peace among the Palestinians than ever so let us hope – fervently!
| 6 October 2009, 6:56 pm |
“However polls find a far higher desire for peace among the Palestinians than ever so let us hope – fervently!”
I’ll drink to that.
| 6 October 2009, 7:13 pm |
Good news, from an unexpected quarter. Flourishing businesses, with more jobs and more money in the economy, must surely be good for the Palestinians themselves and for Israel too.
David T, is Täybeh as good as Maccabee? (Which is a personal favourite of mine — don’ t care so much for Goldstar.)
| 6 October 2009, 10:10 pm |
Taybeh is much, much better than Maccabee and is available on tap in a number of bars in Jerusalem (west and east.) And yes, the growth of the economy in the WB is good for both sides. It wont, however, in my view, make negotiating final status issues between the sides any easier.
| 6 October 2009, 10:13 pm |
This guy is talking a lot of sense, in this and other articles.
“The vigorous and proactive state institution-building program proposed by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is the most responsible and creative idea the Palestinians have put on the table since they accepted a two-state solution. The Quartet has just endorsed it. The United States should now mobilize its resources to make it work, and Israel would be wise not to stand in the way.”
Note also that this article was published in ‘Arab News’ and reproduced un Al Arabiya’s website, i.e., in Saudi-owned media, which seems to suggest the Saudis, along with the quartet, the US, the UN, the Jordanians and the Palestinian PM office, as well as (conditionally), the Israelis, are all behind this bottom-up institution building.
As for whether an Oktoberfest can be ‘resistance’: Over the years the concept of ‘resistance’ as put forward by (for example) Hamas and Hizbollah has come to signify an atavistic opposition to Israeli legitimacy and actions. The so-called ‘culture of resistance’ that these groups seek to stimulate turns this concept into the central and overriding imperative of the entire society.
This is a particularly corrosive concept, since (taken to its logical consequence), the ‘resisters’ build nothing, create nothing, invent nothing, originate nothing; they merely resist whatever is it that Israel happens to be doing. In particular, the resisters are not particularly interested in the positive steps necessary for the creation of a successful Palestinian state.
In this context, I think it is great news that the concept of resistance is being appropriated by people who are actually doing something positive for the Palestinians. This is resistance in the sense that, unfortunately, the cessation of violence and the decision to live side by side with Israel on the part of the Palestinians will not automatically result in the creation of a Palestinian state. At the same time, the building of a vibrant economy and civil society in the West Bank will in various ways undermine the occupation (justified or not on security grounds) and the colonization (unjustifiable in any case, IMO) of the WB.
Last, but not least, this is also resistance in the sense that it undermines Hamas and their ilk; it undermines what they stand for, it undermines their tactics, and it undermines what they hope to accomplish.
In fact, one of best things about Palestinian institution- and civil society-building is that, if succesful, this process will undermine the occupation, and at the same time enhance Israel’s security. For a long time many Israelis who were not particularly keen on colonizing every last hillock with biblical connotations supported the occupation, or elements thereof, for security reasons (and groups like Hamas did their level best to enhance such perceptions). A Palestinian strategy that makes continuing occupation antithetical to Israeli security is potentially a game changer, and if properly supported could succeed even in the face of strong Israeli objections.
| 6 October 2009, 10:51 pm |
If this is any kind of resistance it is resistance to Hamas, who, as well as being evil bastards couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery.
L’chaim!
| 7 October 2009, 3:44 am |
If this is any kind of resistance it is resistance to Hamas, who, as well as being evil bastards couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery.
I wanted to say that, but I couldn’t remember the exact phrase since it’s a Britishism.
| 7 October 2009, 8:39 am |
Encouraging news – perhaps what we need is a CAMRA and HP sponsored Middle East themed beer festival.
There are a couple of breweries in Egypt I think and the following in Israel/WB :
“Smaller brewers are the Tel Aviv Brewhouse in Tel Aviv;[3] the Ramat Ha’Golan micro brewery,[4] Cafe En-Hod near the northern city of Haifa; the Dancing Camel Brewing Company in Tel Aviv;[5] and the Palestinian Taybeh Brewery in the village of Taybeh in the west bank (near Ramallah).[6]”
| 7 October 2009, 11:27 am |
Well, I am glad to learn that there is a micro-brewery in the Golan. another excellent reason not to give it back to the Ba’athi dictator/human toothbrush.
| 7 October 2009, 1:29 pm |
I’m with Ohad. Growing the Palestinian economy is not an act of resistance. Developing the economies of the West Bank and Gaza to everyone’s benefit has been something Israel has tried to help citizens of the territories do since ‘67. It’s the “resistors” who have done their level best to pee in the well.
George Gilder *
Silicon Israel: How market capitalism saved the Jewish state
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_3_jewish-capitalism.html
[...]
Netanyahu’s vision is an Israel that, as a global financial center, could transform the economics of the Middle East. Israel could become a Hong Kong of the desert. Just as Hong Kong ultimately reshaped the Chinese economy in its own image when Deng Xiaoping mimicked its free economy, Israel could become a force for economic liberation in the Middle East, reaching out to Palestinians and other Arabs with the blandishments of commercial opportunity. After all, it has long been Israeli enterprise that has attracted Arabs to Palestine. Between 1967, when Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and 1987, when the first intifada erupted, those two territories were one of the fastest-growing economies on earth. GDP surged 30 percent a year for a decade, the Arab population nearly tripled, six new universities were launched, and Arab longevity jumped from 43 years to 74.
* George Gilder is the founding director of Gilder Technology Associates, a venture capital fund, and a contributing editor of Forbes. His books have sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. The newest is The Israel Test.
I have drunk it, and it is very good.