fugitive peace

Back when Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006, a curious story did the rounds: the Palestinian Taybeh brewery was planning to mark the occasion by releasing a non-alcoholic beer with a label in Hamas green - just in case the Islamists decided to ban booze.

It was a time of many jokes - secular Palestinians were going around exchanging formal Islamic salutations and asking how many lashes you get for driving over the speed limit - so I didn’t take it too seriously.

But two weeks ago I went to the Oktoberfest.

Taybeh is the only entirely Christian town in the West Bank, and the only town with a brewery. Three years ago the brewer, Nadim Khoury, decided that what’s good enough for Munich is good enough for Taybeh, and put on a beer festival. True, the only beer you can get is Taybeh beer, and the Oktoberfest was in September so as to avoid clashing with Ramadan and offending the Muslims in a neighbouring town (who launched a nasty attack over an incident of family honour two years ago). Still, it’s wildly popular, especially with foreigners working in Jerusalem and Ramallah; by the time I got there the town centre looked like the parking lot for an international donor conference.

The highlight of the festival, apart from the beer - and I have to admit I don’t like beer - was DAM, a Palestinian rap crew from the town of Ludd/Lod, now part of Israel. In Israel and Palestine they’re very popular, but their lead singer, Tamer Nafar, still lives in a pokey corner bedroom at his parents’ house. And not just because he’s a devoted son. As Israeli citizens, it’s very hard for them to sell their music (let alone get concert tours) in the Arab world, where Palestinian-Israelis are still treated with suspicion.

Which is why they play gigs like Taybeh, where the sound system was cutting out every five minutes and the audience consisted largely of awed 12-year-old local girls and drunken foreign aid workers trying to dance and make gangsta signals.

Still, everyone was having a great time, and at some point a friend introduced me to Mr Khoury. He looked just like a cartoon brewer: short, plump, jolly, wild hair, loose tie, red face, bloated nose and a little unsteady on his feet. Naturally, he had a beer in one hand.

I asked him about the pro-Hamas beer. Ah, he sighed; they were still working on it. There was a religious problem: if you do it the usual way, which is to brew the beer and then remove the alcohol, a bit of alcohol usually remains, and that might be haram. So they were trying to find a way to make beer without fermenting it. It sounded to me like cooking without heat, but he seemed unfazed. “We are trying and trying, and in the end we will get there!” And off he weaved to find someone else to drink with.