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Across the street from her home in Ramallah, Madees Khoury runs Taybeh Brewing Company, a microbrewery that her father, Nadim, opened more than 30 years ago.
At the age of 39, she is the West Bank (and the Middle East’s) only female brewmaster, carrying forward his dream of making craft beer for his Palestinian Christian community in the Taybeh with the blessing of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority’s first president.
For the past two years, she has faced her hardest test — an intensifying Israeli occupation that has made every shipment of water, grain, and bottles to the community almost impossible.
Over the past four months in particular, Ramallah has faced increasing attacks from settlers.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in July two Palestinians were shot dead and dozens were left injured after settler attacks on the outskirts of Sinjil and Al Mazra’a ash Sharqiya towns.
It’s one of many attacks that took place over the summer.
‘They set fire to cars in the middle of the night, next to the church ruins from the 5th century,’ Madees told Metro.
‘They paint graffiti on houses, attack water pipes for no reason. One man from a nearby Israeli settlement comes on his horse – armed with an M16 assault rifle – and just walks through town to scare us.’
On Thursday, Israel shut the only crossing between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and neighbouring Jordan, stopping more than two million Palestinians from accessing the outside world.
‘Imagine not being able to get out of your neighborhood,’ Madees said.
Like many Palestinians, Madees feels there is nothing she can do to defend herself.
Since 1967, when Israel launched its occupation in the West Bank, Israeli military authorities consolidated complete power over all water resources and water-related infrastructure.
This worsened in recent months, with Amnesty International stating that mass-starvation and dehydration is spreading across Gaza.
‘Even the Internet is not in our control. We still have 3G in Palestine as the Israelis won’t allow Palestinians to have 5G,’ Madees said.
The brewery has struggled with obtaining export permits needed for international shipping through Israeli ports. But Madees hasn’t let this stop her.
In August, the Taybeh Brewing Co announced it would be teaming up with Brewgooder to produce and distribute a new lager in the UK.
Sun & Stone lager, which is brewed in Scotland, has been distributed among 1,600 Co-op supermarkets, with all profits going to aid Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Madees’ family could have opened a brewery in the US, where her father and her uncle studied, but they chose to keep the beer ‘100% Palestinian’ to carry the ‘resistance, resilience, love, passion, sweat, tears, blood’ of people in the West Bank.
The brewery opened right after the 1993 Oslo Accords, a pair of interim agreements that promised to bring about Palestinian self-determination, in the form of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
‘My grandfather told my father and my uncle, David, “You know, we don’t have a brewery in Palestine, why not open one?”‘ Madees said.
‘They challenged him, saying that if he can get them permits and licences, they will move back.
‘Immediately my grandfather got the land, built the building, got the permits and even the blessing from Yasser Arafat at that time. That is how it all started.
‘My father then named the beer Taybeh because he is proud to be from the village of Taybeh.
‘He even keeps a picture of the family tree, which goes back 600 years, on his home.’
Madees grew up in the brewery. From the age of nine, she watched her father and her uncle run the business; her childhood memories pinpricked by recollections of Israeli checkpoints and security installations being planted in her hometown.
Her family was among the few that stayed during the Second Intifada – a major uprising by Palestinians against Israel and its occupation that began in September 2000 – and continued to run the business ‘regardless of how difficult it was.’
She briefly left to study in Boston, but later returned after graduation and moved back to Taybeh to work with her family full-time.
Just as her father did, Madees sees the brewery as a symbol.
‘It is a message to the whole world that Palestinians are like anyone else – we do drink beer, we do make beer, we do work and try to live normal lives,’ she said.
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