West Bank, West Bank (AP) – Order cola to wash away hummus in the West Bank under Israeli occupation recently. Popular local alternative: Chat Cola cans.
Chat Cola – its red tin and iconic white script are remarkably similar to the iconic American soft drink logo – is popular in the West Bank over the past year due to Palestinian consumers getting angry in America I’ve seen it explode Continuous support for Israel Among them The War with Hamas in Gazaprotests to the Pocket Book.
“No one wants to catch him drinking cola,” said Mad Assard, a worker at the Bakery Kafchain Croissant’s home in Ramallah, the West Bank city of the Jordan River. “Everyone is drinking chat now. They’re sending messages.”
Attacks since October 7, 2023 trigger Israel’s catastrophic military campaign in the Gaza Stripa Palestinian-led boycott movement against companies perceived as supporting Israel has gained momentum in the Middle East, with regular American corporate targets. McDonald’s, KFC and Starbucks I saw it Last year’s sales slide.
Here in the West Bank, the boycott has closed two KFC branches in Lamara. However, the most prominent expression of consumer anger was the sudden omnipresentation of chat cola as the shopkeeper entrusts the cola can to the bottom shelf or pulls it completely.
“When people started boycotting, they realized that chats existed,” says Fahedaler, general manager of ChatCola, to the Associated Press from a huge red painted factory in the west coast of the hills, Salfit. I spoke. “We are proud to have created a product that matches the products of a global company.”
Fahed Arar, general manager of Chat Cola Company, posed next to a billboard with corporate brands at the Palestinian company’s bottling factory in Salfit, the West Bank city of Palestine, on February 13, 2025, and said, “Palestine.” Read “Taste of”. AP Photo/Nacernacel)
As the “local buy” movement has skyrocketed during the war, Chat Cola said sales in the West Bank had skyrocketed by more than 40% last year compared to 2023.
Companies said statistics on local market commands are not available due to the difficulty of data collection during the war, but anecdotal evidence suggests that Chat Cola clawed some of Coca-Cola’s market share. It suggests that there is.
“Chat was previously a specialized product, but from what we saw, it dominates the market,” said Abdulqader, 25, the owner of Salfit supermarket, which boasts a fridge full of Fiji drinks. Azeez Hassan said.
But all the workers in the Coca-Cola franchise in the West Bank, a national beverage company, are Palestinians, and boycotts also affect them, said its general manager, Imad Hindi.
Employees will leave the Chat Cola Company bottling factory in Salfit City, West Bank, Jordan River on February 13th, 2025 (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
He refused to elaborate on the business impact of boycotts, as he strengthened security controls in Israel, which increased the economic free fall of the West Bank and increased the shipping times and costs of Palestinian companies during the war. It suggests that it will not be released.
The Coca-Cola Company did not respond to requests for comment.
Whether the movement has lasting consequences or not, it reflects a surge in political consciousness, said Sarah Hussein, head of the Ramallah Chamber of Commerce.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a boycott to this extent,” Hussein noted how institutions like the prominent University of Baseite near Ramallah canceled Cola’s orders. “Everything has changed since October 7th, and after Trump, everything will continue to change.”
President Donald Trump’s call For the mass expulsion of Palestinians From Gaza I rephrased last week As a recommendation, it has more inflammation Anti-American sentiment Around the area.
The company is set in an international market as orders are being poured from the US and Europe as well as from Lebanon and Yemen, says PR manager Ahmad Hammad.
I was hired to help chat with Cola Cash In The flammable emotions created by warHammad rebranded what began as a niche mama and pop manipulation in 2019.
“We had to take advantage of the opportunity,” he said of the company’s new “Palestinian Taste” logo and flag shades.
The completed aluminum cans from the Chat Cola Company brand will move along the production line of the Palestinian company’s bottling factory in Salfit on February 13, 2025, in the west bank of the Jordan River.
With a scramble to meet demand, Chatcola has opened a second production site in adjacent Jordan. We have developed new candy-colored flavours like blueberries, strawberries and green apples.
In Salfit’s sultry plant, a recent lab court graduate said he struggled to produce a soda drink that could be sold to taste, not just a sense of solidarity with the Palestinians.
“In the past, quality has been an issue with local Palestinian products,” said Hannah Al Ahmad, head of quality control at Chatcola. After that, the assembly line rang. “If the quality is not good, boycotts don’t stick.”
Chatcola worked with French chemists to produce flavors. This is hardly indistinguishable from cola, like the packaging. That’s for some flavors: squint at the lemon lime soda in chat and you might mistake it for a can of sprite.
In 2020, the Ramala-based national beverage company sued Chat Cola for copyright infringement in a Palestinian court, claiming that Chat had mimicked the design of cokes for multiple drinks. The court ultimately supposes Chatcola to lay a nuance in CAN design that did not violate copyright laws.
At Salfit’s warehouse, drivers loaded Soda’s “family size” packages on trucks that are tied up not only in the West Bank but also in Tel Aviv, Haifa and other cities in Israel. Staff said there was a chat soda sale Israel’s mostly Arabs The city rose 25% last year. To broaden its appeal in Israel, Chatcola has secured kosher certification after a Jewish rabbis thoroughly inspected the facility.
On February 13th, 2025, a branded aluminum can pallet (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser) located on the production line of the Palestinian Chat Cola Bottling Factory in Salfit, the West Bank city of the Jordan River.
Still, Palestinian-led critics Boycott, sale and sanctions movement, or BDSsays the main purpose of sequestering Israel economically to occupy Palestinian lands is merely to exacerbate the conflict.
“Behavior similar to BDS does not help separate the community and connect people,” said Vlad Khaykin, executive vice president of Social Impact and Partnerships at Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group. Masu. “The kind of rhetoric that is accepted by the BDS movement to justify the boycott of Israel is truly dangerous.”
Chat Cola gets in the way to avoid buying from Israel – sourcing materials and materials from France, Italy and Kuwait – it cannot be avoided The situation of Israeli occupationIsrael rules Palestinian Economyboundary lines, imports, etc.
Delivery of raw materials for chatting at Cola’s West Bank factory will be attacked with an import tax of 35%. Israel collects on its behalf of the Palestinians. General Manager Arar said his company’s success depends much more on Israeli bureaucratic goodwill than nationalist enthusiasm.
For almost a month last fall, Israeli authorities detained aluminium cargo from Jordan in Chat Allenbee Bridge Crossingforced a part of the factory to spend the company tens of thousands of dollars.
Among the local buyers, some of the remaining local buyers in Lamula was the croissant house in Ramallah. There, on a recent afternoon at least one thirsty customer stood up to the almost empty fridge and slid next to the supermarket for a can of coke.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Assad, a worker. “We want to be self-sufficient, but we aren’t.”
