Coca-Cola’s appeal in the West Bank bubbles, while the war increases the demand for local look alike
Order a cola to wash some hummus in West Bank nowadays, and the chances are that the waiter disapproving the head – or worse, murmured “shame, shame” in Arabic – before he suggests the popular local alternative: a can of chat – Cola.
Chat Cola – his red can and the crude white script with a remarkable resemblance to the legendary logo of the American soft drink – last year as a Palestinian consumer in his war against America against Israel angrily exploded in popularity. In the Gaza, protested with their paperbacks.
“Nobody wants to be caught drinking cola,” said Mad Asaad, 21, a worker in the Croissant House bakery chain in the city of Ramallah, who stopped selling Cola after the outbreak of war. “Everyone drinks now. It sends a message. “
Violence in the West Bank has been triggered on October 7, 2023 since the war in Gaza, when thousands of terrorists stormed from Hamas to the south of Israel to kill around 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
After the attack of Hamas, Israel tightened control over the Palestinian movement inside and outside the West Bank, the economy of which has suffered as a result.
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During the war in Gaza, the boycott movement led by Palestinians against companies that are regarded as the support of Israel gained dynamics in the Middle East. The usual American corporate goals such as McDonald’s, KFC and Starbucks recorded sales in the region last year.
The anti-American mood in the region was further ignited at the beginning of this month after US President Donald Trump had proposed to take over Gaza, permanently displace its residents and rebuild the strip as the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
The anti-American boycott has closed two KFC branches in Ramallah on the west bank. However, the most striking expression of the outrage of the consumer was the sudden omnipresent of chat -cola, since shopkeepers call cola cans on the lower shelf or pull them entirely.
“When people started to boycott, they knew that chat existed,” said Fahed Arar, General Manager of Chat Cola, the Associated Press from the huge, red -painted factory, embedded in the hilly western bank of Salfit. “I am proud to have created a product that corresponds to that of a global company.”
Fahed Arar, General Manager of Chat Cola Company, poses alongside an advertising table with the ‘Palestinian taste of Coca-Cola Look-Alike’ in the filling of the Palestinian company in the West Bank City of Salfit on February 13, 2025. AP Photo/Nasser )))
With the rise of the “Buy Local” movement during the war, Chat Cola said more than 40% compared to 2023 last year.
While the companies have no available statistics on their command about the local market due to the difficulties of collecting the war, anecdoting evidence indicates that Chat Cola is cramped on some of the market shares of Coca-Cola.
“Chat used to be a special product, but after what we saw, it dominates the market,” said Abdulqader Azeez Hassan, 25, the owner of a supermarket in Salfit, which offers refrigerators full of bubbling drinks.
But the workers of Coca-Cola’s franchise in West Bank, the National Beverage Company, are all Palestinians, and a boycott also affects them, said his general manager Imad Hindi.
He refused to exploit the business effects of the boycott, which indicates that it cannot be dismantled by the effects of the effects of the economic, free autumn of the West Bank and intensified Israeli security controls of the West Bank, which the shipping times and the costs for Palestinian companies during the Have multiplied war.
The Coca-Cola company did not respond to a request for comments.
The employees go from the Chat Cola Company’s filling out in the West Bank City of Salit on February 13, 2025 (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Regardless of whether the movement has permanent consequences or not, it reflects an upswing in political consciousness, said Salah Hussein, head of the Ramallah Chamber of Commerce.
“It is the first time that we saw a boycott to this extent,” said Hussein and found how institutions like the prominent Birzeit University near Ramallah canceled their cola orders. “Everything has changed after October 7th. And after Trump everything will change. “
With orders that flow not only from Lebanon and Yemen, but also from the United States and Europe, the company has its target on the international market, said Ahmad Hammad, Chat Colas PR manager from Cola.
Hammad has hired the company to illustrate the flammable emotions created by the war, and renamed it as niche moment in 2019.
“We had to take the opportunity,” he said of the new logo and the national flags of the company “Palestinian taste” and national flag of the company.
Chat Cola opens a second production site in neighboring Jordan. New aromas, such as blueberry, strawberry and green apple colored on sweets, were released.
An employee sweeps up as a doses of the chat chat -chat -chaple -ple -dränk of the chat cola company along a production line in the filling of the Palestinian company in the West Bank City of Salfit on February 13, 2025 (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser). (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
In the steaming plant in Salfit, the recent college graduates in Laboränels said that they tried to produce a carbonated drink that could sell its taste, not just a customer’s feeling of solidarity among the Palestinians.
“The quality was a problem with local Palestinian products before,” said Hanna al-Ahmad, 32, the head of quality control for chat cola, which can then be heard about the swamp of the machines, then the assembly lines can be downwards. “If it is not a good quality, the boycott doesn’t stick.”
Chat Cola worked with chemists in France to produce the taste that Cokes can hardly be distinguished – just like his packaging. This is the case for several flavors: Squint in chat lemon lime soda and you can confuse it with a can of sprite.
In 2020, the National Beverage Company Chat Cola, based in Ramallah, sued the Palestinian court for copyright infringement and claimed that Chat had imitated Coke for several drinks. The court ultimately stood on the chat Cola side and found that there were enough subtle differences in the can designs that had not violated copyright.
In the Salfit warehouse, the drivers “family size” packages with soda in trucks, which are bound not only for the West Bank, but also for Tel Aviv, Haifa and other cities in Israel. The employees said that Chat -Soda’s sales in the predominantly Arab cities of Israel rose by 25% last year. In order to expand his attractiveness in Israel, Chat Cola secured a kosher certification after a rabbi thoroughly inspected the establishment of the company.
Nevertheless, critics of the boycott led by Palestinian, the sale and sanction movement or the BDS say that its main goal-economy Israel to isolate-only intensifies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On the anniversary of October 7, 2023, the Hamas-Anturm, Anti-Israel, Propalestinian demonstrators, marching to support the boycott, sales and sanctions movements against Israel on the Los Angeles Campus of the University of Southern California, October 7th, on 7th . October, 2024. News/SCNG, about JTA)
“BDS and similar actions drift the communities, they do not contribute to bringing people together” in Los Angeles.
“The type of rhetoric that is hugged by the BDS movement to justify the boycott of Israel is really dangerous,” said Khaykin.
While Chat Cola does everything to avoid the purchase from Israel – ingredients and materials from France, Italy and Kuwait, it cannot avoid the circumstances in West Bank.
The deliveries of raw materials for the chat factory of the Cola West bank are made with an import tax of 35% -half of which collects Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. General Manager, Arar, said that the success of his company depends far more on Israeli bureaucratic goodwill than on nationalist passion.
The Palestinians are waiting at an Israeli control point between the West Bank Cities Nablus and Jenin, January 11, 2025 (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)
According to the company, his aluminum programs from Jordan were arrested for almost a month by the Israeli authorities at the Allby of the Bridge Crossing last autumn, which forced some of the factory to close and cost the company tens of thousands of dollars.
Among the local buyers who let down, the Croissant House was in Ramallah, where on a recent afternoon at least a thirsty customer slipped for a can of cola with an almost empty fridge next door.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Asaad, the worker. “We want to be self -sufficient. But we are not. “
