Anti-US sentiment bubbling up in the West Bank bolsters demand for a local Coke-alternative

With the ‘buy local’ movement burgeoning during the war, Chat Cola said its sales in the West Bank surged more than 40 percent last year, compared to 2023. (AP)
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Updated 25 February 2025
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Anti-US sentiment bubbling up in the West Bank bolsters demand for a local Coke-alternative

  • Chat Cola has seen its products explode in popularity across the occupied West Bank in the past year
  • Palestinian consumers, angry at America’s steadfast support for Israel, protested with their pockets

SALFIT, West Bank: Order a Coke to wash down some hummus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank these days and chances are the waiter will shake his head disapprovingly – or worse, mutter “shame, shame” in Arabic – before suggesting the popular local alternative: a can of Chat Cola.
Chat Cola – its red tin and sweeping white script bearing remarkable resemblance to the iconic American soft drink’s logo – has seen its products explode in popularity across the occupied West Bank in the past year as Palestinian consumers, angry at America’s steadfast support for Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza, protest with their pockets.
“No one wants to be caught drinking Coke,” said Mad Asaad, 21, a worker at the bakery-cafe chain Croissant House in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which stopped selling Coke after the war erupted. “Everyone drinks Chat now. It’s sending a message.”
Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered Israel’s devastating military campaign in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian-led boycott movement against companies perceived as supportive of Israel gained momentum across the Middle East, where the usual American corporate targets like McDonald’s, KFC and Starbucks saw sales slide last year.
Here in the West Bank, the boycott has shuttered two KFC branches in Ramallah. But the most noticeable expression of consumer outrage has been the sudden ubiquity of Chat Cola as shopkeepers relegate Coke cans to the bottom shelf – or pull them altogether.
“When people started to boycott, they became aware that Chat existed,” Fahed Arar, general manager of Chat Cola, said from the giant, red-painted factory, nestled in the hilly West Bank town of Salfit. “I’m proud to have created a product that matches that of a global company.”
With the “buy local” movement burgeoning during the war, Chat Cola said its sales in the West Bank surged more than 40 percent last year, compared to 2023.
While the companies said they had no available statistics on their command of the local market due to the difficulties of data collection in wartime, anecdotal evidence suggests Chat Cola is clawing at some of Coca-Cola’s market share.
“Chat used to be a specialty product, but from what we’ve seen, it dominates the market,” said Abdulqader Azeez Hassan, 25, the owner of a supermarket in Salfit that boasts fridges full of the fizzy drinks.
But workers at Coca-Cola’s franchise in the West Bank, the National Beverage Company, are all Palestinian, and a boycott affects them, too, said its general manager, Imad Hindi.
He declined to elaborate on the business impact of the boycott, suggesting it can’t be untangled from the effects of the West Bank’s economic free-fall and intensified Israeli security controls that have multiplied shipping times and costs for Palestinian companies during the war.
The Coca-Cola Company did not respond to a request for comment.
Whether or not the movement brings lasting consequences, it does reflect an upsurge of political consciousness, said Salah Hussein, head of the Ramallah Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever seen a boycott to this extent,” Hussein said, noting how institutions like the prominent Birzeit University near Ramallah canceled their Coke orders. “After Oct. 7, everything changed. And after Trump, everything will continue to change.”
President Donald Trump’s call for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, which he rephrased last week as a recommendation, has further inflamed anti-American sentiment around the region.
With orders pouring in not only from Lebanon and Yemen but also the United States and Europe, the company has its sights set on the international market, said PR manager Ahmad Hammad.
Hired to help Chat Cola cash in on combustible emotions created by the war, Hammad has rebranded what began in 2019 as a niche mom-and-pop operation.
“We had to take advantage of the opportunity,” he said of the company’s new “Palestinian taste” logo and national flag-hued merchandise.
In its scramble to satisfy demand, Chat Cola is opening a second production site in neighboring Jordan. It rolled out new candy-colored flavors, like blueberry, strawberry and green apple.
At the steamy plant in Salfit, recent college graduates in lab coats said that they took pains to produce a carbonated beverage that could sell on its taste, not just a customer’s sense of solidarity with the Palestinians.
“Quality has been a problem with local Palestinian products before,” said Hanna Al-Ahmad, 32, the head of quality control for Chat Cola, shouting to be heard over the whir of machines squirting caramel-colored elixir into scores of small cans that then whizzed down assembly lines. “If it’s not good quality, the boycott won’t stick.”
Chat Cola worked with chemists in France to produce the flavor, which is almost indistinguishable from Coke’s – just like its packaging. That’s the case for several flavors: Squint at Chat’s lemon-lime soda and you might mistake it for a can of Sprite.
In 2020, the Ramallah-based National Beverage Company sued Chat Cola for copyright infringement in Palestinian court, contending that Chat had imitated Coke’s designs for multiple drinks. The court ultimately sided with Chat Cola, determining there were enough subtle differences in the can designs that it didn’t violate copyright law.
In the Salfit warehouse, drivers loaded “family size” packages of soda into trucks bound not only for the West Bank but also for Tel Aviv, Haifa and other cities in Israel. Staffers said that Chat soda sales in Israel’s predominantly Arab cities jumped 25 percent last year. To broaden its appeal in Israel, Chat Cola secured kosher certification after a Jewish rabbi’s thorough inspection of the facility.
Still, critics of the Palestinians-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, say that its main objective – to isolate Israel economically for its occupation of Palestinian lands – only exacerbates the conflict.
“BDS and similar actions drive communities apart, they don’t help to bring people together,” said Vlad Khaykin, the executive vice president of social impact and partnerships in North America for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. “The kind of rhetoric being embraced by the BDS movement to justify the boycott of Israel is really quite dangerous.”
While Chat Cola goes out of its way to avoid buying from Israel – sourcing ingredients and materials from France, Italy and Kuwait – it can’t avoid the circumstances of Israeli occupation, in which Israel dominates the Palestinian economy, controls borders, imports and more.
Deliveries of raw materials to Chat Cola’s West Bank factory get hit with a 35 percent import tax – half of which Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians. The general manager, Arar, said his company’s success depends far more on Israeli bureaucratic goodwill than nationalist fervor.
For nearly a month last fall, Israeli authorities detained Chat’s aluminum shipments from Jordan at the Allenby Bridge Crossing, forcing part of the factory to shut down and costing the company tens of thousands of dollars.
Among the local buyers left in the lurch was Croissant House in Ramallah, where, on a recent afternoon, at least one thirsty customer, confronting a nearly empty refrigerator, slipped to the supermarket next-door for a can of Coke.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Asaad, the worker. “We want to be self-sufficient. But we’re not.”


Injured seals get care and sanctuary at a new center in the Netherlands

Updated 20 sec ago
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Injured seals get care and sanctuary at a new center in the Netherlands

  • A 4-month-old gray seal named Witje swims gracefully through one of nine new tanks at the World Heritage Center, a recently opened rescue facility in the north of the Netherlands
  • The new center can treat around 70 seals at a time and has 12 intensive care units for animals with serious injuries
LAUWERSOOG: Gliding gracefully through the waters at his new home, Witje pauses briefly to peer through a large window at the curious and admiring visitors.
The 4-month-old gray seal is a lucky survivor able to swim in one of nine new tanks at the World Heritage Center, or WEC, a recently opened seal rescue facility in Lauwersoog, in the north of the Netherlands.
He was brought in after being orphaned and was suffering from a swollen flipper and a damaged eye.
“On a yearly basis, we roughly treat about 200 seals,” Sander van Dijk, the curator of the center, told The Associated Press. In 2024, researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands counted around 24,000 seals across the Wadden Sea.
Most are pups who get separated from their mother, known as howlers for their plaintive wailing. Others are injured by floating debris or are struck by passing vessels.
“If we look at our own data over the past 15 years, we just see every year more seals that somehow get entangled in waste in the sea, mostly fishing nets,” Van Dijk said.
The WEC, which officially opened to the public Saturday, replaces the Pieterburen Seal Center, a rescue facility set up in 1971 to treat injured seals found in and around the nearby Wadden Sea, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Witje’s tank is an upgrade from his previous quarters. He gets to swim in water directly from the sea, rather than tap water, in order to maintain a habitat as close as possible to the seals’ natural environment.
“They are adapted to living in seawater. It’s good for their fur. But also seawater, through its salt, has some properties that makes wounds heal faster,” Van Dijk said.
The WEC can treat around 70 seals at a time and has 12 intensive-care units for animals with serious injuries who are able to recover in special enclosures which offer a calm environment. They are prevented from swimming in order to rest and the space is cleaned frequently to prevent infections from waste.
The new building, which cost over 40 million euros ($45 million), with financing provided by local and regional governments as well as charitable organizations, tells more than just the story of the seas. It’s an educational space which teaches visitors about the Wadden Sea, the largest continuous system of intertidal flats in the world, extending along the coasts of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.
The new facility is significantly closer to the sea than the previous location. The tanks for the 10 seals currently residing at WEC look out over the water. Caregivers at the center are optimistic that Witje will soon recover enough to be released back into the waves.

Man rescued from Mount Fuji twice in one week: reports

Updated 55 min 14 sec ago
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Man rescued from Mount Fuji twice in one week: reports

  • Chinese university student, who lives in Japan, was found Saturday by another off-season hiker on a trail more than 3,000 meters above sea level
  • People are dissuaded from hiking outside of the summer season because conditions can be treacherous

TOKYO: A man in his 20s was airlifted from Japan’s Mount Fuji then rescued again from its steep slopes just days later because he returned to find his phone, according to media reports.
Police said the Chinese university student, who lives in Japan, was found Saturday by another off-season hiker on a trail more than 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) above sea level.
“He was suspected of having altitude sickness and was taken to hospital,” a police spokesman in Shizuoka region said on Monday.
Later, officers discovered that the man was the same one who had been rescued on Mount Fuji four days previously, private broadcaster TBS and other media outlets reported.
Police could not immediately confirm the reports, which said the man – having been rescued by helicopter on Tuesday – returned on Friday to retrieve his mobile phone, which he forgot to bring with him during the first rescue.
It was not known whether he was able to find his phone in the end, said the reports, citing unnamed sources.
Mount Fuji, an active volcano and Japan’s highest peak, is covered in snow for most of the year.
Its hiking trails are open from early July to early September, a period when crowds trudge up the steep, rocky slopes through the night to see the sunrise.
People are dissuaded from hiking outside of the summer season because conditions can be treacherous.
The symmetrical 3,776-meter mountain has been immortalized in countless artworks, including Hokusai’s “Great Wave.” It last erupted around 300 years ago.
In a bid to prevent overcrowding on Mount Fuji, authorities last year brought in an entry fee and cap on numbers for the most popular Yoshida Trail.
Starting this summer, hikers on any of Mount Fuji’s four main trails will be charged an entry fee of 4,000 yen ($27).


Napoleon letter denying he ordered pope kidnapping sold at auction

Updated 27 April 2025
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Napoleon letter denying he ordered pope kidnapping sold at auction

  • The letter, signed 'Napole,' went on sale the day after the funeral of Pope Francis, who died on Monday
  • The sale price was way above the estimate of 12,000-15,000 euros, according to the Osenat auction house

PARIS: A hand-written letter from Napoleon denying his role in the kidnapping of Pope Pius VII in 1809 was sold at auction on Sunday outside Paris for 26,360 euros ($30,000), the auctioneer said.
The letter, signed “Napole,” went on sale the day after the funeral of Pope Francis, who died on Monday.
The sale price was way above the estimate of 12,000-15,000 euros, according to the Osenat auction house.
The auction’s location in Fontainebleau, south of Paris, was highly symbolic as the town was where the head of the Catholic Church was imprisoned after being initially held in Savona in Italy.
“This arrest is one of the events that will define Napoleon’s reign, at a political and religious level,” Jean-Christophe Chataignier, an expert in the Napoleonic era at Osenat, told AFP.
“Napoleon knows this letter will be made public and that it’s intended for authorities everywhere,” he added.
French forces kidnapped Pope Pius VII in his private apartments in the Quirinal Palace in Rome.
He remained a prisoner of Napoleon for five years.
The pontiff had sought to maintain the Vatican’s sway over the French Catholic Church and resisted Napoleon’s desire to exert control over the clergy.
'Without my orders'
In the letter addressed to French nobleman and ally Jean-Jacques-Regis de Cambaceres, Napoleon feigns ignorance of Pius VII’s detention.
“It was without my orders and against my will that the pope was taken out of Rome; it is again without my orders and against my will that he is being brought into France,” he wrote.
“But I was only informed of this 10 or 12 days after it had already been carried out. From the moment I learn that the pope is staying in a fixed location, and that my intentions can be made known in time and carried out, I will consider what measures I must take...,” he added.
Napoleon memorabilia regularly comes up for sale at auction in a flourishing trade marked by intense interest from collectors.
Two pistols that he once intended to use to kill himself were sold in France last July for 1.7 million euros, while one of his trademark “bicorne” hats set a record price for his possessions when it was acquired for 1.9 million euros in November 2023.
A sword that belonged to Napoleon and was specially ordered for the personal use of the French emperor is to be auctioned in Paris next month, with an estimated price of 700,000 to one million euros.


Sri Lanka Buddhists overwhelm city in bid to see Buddha's sacred tooth

Updated 24 April 2025
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Sri Lanka Buddhists overwhelm city in bid to see Buddha's sacred tooth

  • Four people died and hundreds fell sick while waiting in lengthy queues to see a sacred tooth in the city of Kandy
  • Police said 32 buses were turned away because the city had run out of parking space

COLOMBO: Buddhists flocking to see a sacred tooth in Sri Lanka were urged by authorities to stay away on Thursday after four people died and hundreds fell sick while in lengthy queues.
Regional police chief Lalith Pathinayake said queues in the city of Kandy were already 10 kilometers (six miles) long as Buddhists waited to worship what they believe to be a tooth of the Buddha — a special showing of the relic that will end on Sunday.
Officials estimated there were around 450,000 people in queues on Thursday morning, more than double the expected daily number of 200,000.
“At the rate the queue is moving, even those already in line this morning may not be able to enter the temple,” Deputy Inspector General Pathinayake said. “We appeal to the people not to come to Kandy.”
The city’s main state-run hospital reported more than 300 people had been admitted after falling ill while spending days in cramped conditions. Four people, including an older woman, were pronounced dead on admission.

At the rate the queue is moving, even those already in line this morning may not be able to enter the temple

Lalith Pathinayake, regional police chief

More than 2,000 people who fainted while standing in line were treated at 11 mobile health units, local officials said.
“We are trying to avoid a stampede,” said Sarath Abeykoon, the governor of the province. “Health authorities have raised concerns about sanitation.”
The railway department said it was suspending all additional trains to the city because authorities were already overwhelmed by the number of pilgrims.
Police commandos were deployed to move thousands of pilgrims away from an old bridge that officials warned could collapse due to the excessive weight on it.
Police said 32 buses were turned away because the city had run out of parking space.
The relic was last displayed publicly in March 2009, when an estimated one million people paid homage.
Authorities had expected around two million visitors over the 10-day exhibition this time, but that figure was surpassed within five days.


In Dubai’s Gold Souk, bullion’s record run brings little joy for jewellers

Updated 22 April 2025
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In Dubai’s Gold Souk, bullion’s record run brings little joy for jewellers

  • Bullion prices have hit record highs above $3,400 an ounce
  • US tariffs and other factors have added fire to already hot demand for gold

DUBAI: In the bustling Gold Souk in Dubai, dubbed the “City of Gold,” 22-karat gold jewelry is a traditional favorite for weddings, religious celebrations, and as a family investment.
Yet with bullion prices hitting record highs above $3,400 an ounce, there are signs of change, as buyers look to diamonds and lighter gold jewelry, instead.
While US tariffs and other factors have added fire to already hot demand for gold as an investment, the impact is different for gold jewelry, according to Andrew Naylor, head of Middle East and Public Policy at the World Gold Council (WGC).
“In markets like Dubai, this creates a two-fold effect: on one hand, you see stronger interest in gold as a safe-haven asset, on the other, high prices dampen jewelry demand.”
At Dubai’s Gold Souk, retailers said they are seeing this trend, as current prices prompt shoppers to look for alternatives.
“There are no potential customers nowadays because of the gold prices,” said Fahad Khan, a sales representative at retailer Damas Jewellery.
“It’s a little bit tough to afford gold, so I think it’s better to go with diamonds,” said Lalita Dave, 52, as she browsed around the Gold Souk.
Lab-grown diamonds
Dubai has been a magnet for gold buyers for at least 80 years, starting with Iranian and Indian traders, both cultures sharing a tradition of 22-karat jewelry for adornment and investment.
Yet as gold prices rose 27 percent last year, demand for gold jewelry in the UAE fell by around 13 percent, outpacing an 11 percent drop globally, according to the WGC.
Jewellery demand could face further pressure across key regions in 2025 if gold prices remain elevated or volatile, the WGC said in its gold demand trends report published in February.
Price swings, more than price levels, are increasingly shaping consumer behavior, particularly in India, it noted.
Shifts in Indian purchasing patterns often ripple through Gulf markets such as the UAE, where buyers are a key driver of sales.
Goldman Sachs recently raised its end-2025 gold forecast to $3,700 per ounce and said prices could climb as high as $4,500.
“Higher gold prices are likely to dampen demand for jewelry, in a classic example of how the best cure for high prices is high prices,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.
One sign of economizing has been the rise of lab-grown diamonds.
India exported $171 million worth of lab-grown diamonds to the UAE in 2024, up almost 57 percent from $109 million two years earlier, data from the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council showed.
India’s exports of cut and polished diamonds to the UAE in the April–November 2024 were up 3.7 percent.
UAE ranked third in global diamond imports in 2023, trade data shows, its primary trade partners including India, South Africa, and Belgium.
While the UAE accounted for just 1.5 percent of the global diamond jewelry market by revenue in 2023, it is projected to grow by 5.9 percent annually to reach nearly $2 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research.
That outpaces the global growth forecast of 4.5 percent and makes the UAE the fastest growing market in the Middle East and Africa.
Trade tensions
One impact from recent trade tensions with the US has been accelerated talk about finding alternative markets and production hubs, two executives at major Indian diamond exporters said.
If tensions persist, potentially spanning years, one of the sources speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity said his company’s contingency plans included shifting some Indian production overseas, including to the UAE.
Shamlal Ahamed, managing director of international operations at retailer Malabar Gold & Diamonds, said the rise in lab-grown diamond jewelry sales in the UAE appeared to be driven more by design preferences than pricing and he remained bullish on gold jewelry demand.
“While price-conscious buyers may wait for a dip, our experience shows that such declines are often short-lived, with buyers quickly adapting to new price levels.”