.jpeg?trim=43,218,58,183&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "The West Bank brewery battling Israeli blocks to export rare Palestinian beer to the UK – UK Times")
In a grainy black and white security video, three masked, club-wielding figures smash up a grey car on a residential street.
It was 7.40pm on a quiet Tuesday evening in the Christian town of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank, around 10 miles by road to the bustling administrative capital of Ramallah.
Nadim Khoury, the 65-year-old founder of the West Bank’s first brewery situated in the town, says his family has lived there for 600 years. “There is no way that I will go anywhere,” he says undaunted, speaking the day after the car attack.
But settler attacks are just one of a number of obstacles, including Israeli export controls and a heavily damaged tourist industry, which have led to a 70 per cent collapse in sales of Taybeh beer since the Hamas-led 7 October attacks and Israel’s subsequent military campaigns.
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“Doing business in Palestine,” explains Nadim, “is not like doing business in any other part of the world”.
He started brewing beer in a Boston dorm room in the US in 1982 and set up the brewery with his brother, David, in 1994, located in the West Bank’s only all-Christian town.
It is now run by his daughter, Madees Khoury, the Middle East’s only female brewmaster.
In recent years, sales among locals have dropped significantly. Palestinians have been financially squeezed since 7 October, with tens of thousands having their working permits in Israel revoked.
The region’s tourist sector, which Nadim says is where they gain most of their business, has also been ravaged as a result.
In spring 2024, the Palestinian tourism ministry said an average of 278,000 tourists per month visited the West Bank and East Jerusalem between January and October 2023. In the months following, numbers plummeted by more than 99 per cent.
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Although tourism has partially recovered, numbers are still lower than before, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Taybeh’s exports, including to Britain, Germany, France, the US and Canada, have become increasingly important – but its efforts are being hampered by Israeli checkpoint delays, permit requirements, and restricted road use for Palestinians.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says there are 849 “movement obstacles” in place in the West Bank as of May 2025.
Palestinians are often stranded for hours when roads are closed, with the agency stating Israeli restrictions “entrench territorial and social fragmentation, and contribute to worsening humanitarian conditions”.
The Israeli military says security operations in 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 claim that it intentionally restricts the everyday lives of Palestinians is “entirely unfounded”.
For Taybeh Brewery, restricting movement can prevent entire shipments from successfully leaving the Israeli ports of Ashdod and Haifa.
Closures of the Allenby (or King Hussein) Bridge between the occupied West Bank and Jordan also pose major problems.
Meanwhile, settler attacks on the spring that provides water to Taybeh and 18 other towns limit the brewery’s production, 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.
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 business, said to be the first microbrewery in the Middle East, has committed to continuing its limited exports.
Beer from its original West Bank brewery is sold in Akub, a Palestinian restaurant in west London, while it has also partnered with Glasgow-based brewery Brewgooder to produce Sun & Stone lager, which is sold in Co-op stores across the UK.
Keeping the business running, Madees says, is “our peaceful way of resistance to the occupation and to these settler attacks”.
