Salfit:
In a red box factory that stands out among the gray hills of the West Bank, Chat Cola employees have rushed to quench Palestinians’ hunger for local products since the Gaza war broke out last year.
With packaging reminiscent of Coca-Cola’s iconic red and white aluminum cans, Chat Cola has tapped into Palestinians’ desire to avoid brands seen as too supportive of Israel.
“Demand for (Chat Cola) has increased since the start of the war because of the boycott,” owner Fahed Arar told AFP at the factory in the occupied West Bank town of Salfit.
Julien, a restaurateur in the city of Ramallah, further south, said he has stocked his classic red Coca-Cola fridge with the local alternative since the war began in October last year.
Supermarket manager Mahmud Sidr described how sales of Palestinian products soared last year.
“We noticed an increase in sales of Arab and Palestinian products that do not support Israel,” he said.
Although Coca-Cola does not provide Israeli troops in Gaza with free goods – as some American fast food brands claim – Coca-Cola is seen as simply too American.
The United States is providing massive military assistance to Israel, assistance that continues during the devastating military campaign in Gaza that Israel launched in response to Hamas’ unprecedented attack of October 7, 2023.
Coca-Cola did not respond to a request for comment, but said the company does not support religion, nor “any political causes, governments or nation-states.”
An executive at the National Beverage Company, the Palestinian firm that bottles Coca-Cola in the Palestinian territories, told AFP that the company had not noticed the return of many products from local stores.
However, there was a drop of as much as 80 percent in sales of the drink to foreign chains, the manager said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Not just Coke
“The national boycott movement has had a major impact,” said Fahed Arar.
Ibrahim al-Qadi, head of the Palestinian Ministry of Economy’s consumer protection department, told AFP that 300 tons of Israeli products have been destroyed in the past three months after their expiration date due to a lack of buyers.
The Palestinian economy’s dependence on Israeli products has made a broader boycott difficult, and Chat Cola’s popularity partly stems from the fact that it is one of the few quality Palestinian alternatives.
“There is a willingness to boycott if Palestinian producers can produce equally good quality and price,” the head of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, Raja Khalidi, told AFP.
Khalidi said the desire for Palestinian replacements has grown sharply since the start of the war in Gaza, but is being suppressed by “a question of production capacity that we lack.”
A boycott campaign has had more success in neighboring Arab states that are less dependent on Israeli goods.
In neighboring Jordan, French retail giant Carrefour’s franchisee, Dubai-based conglomerate Majid Al Futtaim Group, announced it would suspend all its operations after activists called for a boycott.
‘Palestinian taste’
Chat Cola’s Arar is proud to develop a Palestinian quality product.
Staff at the company’s Salfit factory wear sweaters with the words “Palestinian taste” in Arabic and the Palestinian flag.
After opening the factory in 2019, Arar plans to open a new factory in Jordan to meet international demand and avoid the complications of operating in the occupied West Bank.
Although the factory still produces thousands of cans of Chat, one production line has been shut down for over a month.
Israeli authorities have stopped a large shipment of raw materials at the Jordanian border, affecting production, Arar said, adding that he can only meet 10 to 15 percent of the demand for his product.
As Arar spoke, Israeli air defenses intercepted a missile likely launched from Lebanon, creating a small cloud within sight of the factory.
But the war also brought opportunities.
“There has never been as much political support for buying local as there is now, so it’s a good time for other entrepreneurs to start,” says economist Khalidi.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)