Taybeh, West Bank (ENI). There was barely a knackwurst sausage, Wiener schnitzel, sauerkraut, or accordion and tuba in sight. Yet the tantalising smell of grilled meats wafted through the air and the music of a traditional dabkeh dance performed on the stage blasted through loudspeakers as the West Bank’s Taybeh village celebrated its fifth annual “Oktoberfest” on 3 and 4 October.

“The beer is fantastic, the food cheap, wonderful and fast,” 42-year-old Kimberly Bell, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota., who works with USAID told Ecumenical News International. Sporting a twisting vine and flowers henna tattoo on her hand, she admitted that a beer festival is not the first thing that normally comes to mind when one thinks about the West Bank.

The Oktoberfest experience in the West Bank is unique to Taybeh, the only all-Christian village in the West Bank, said event coordinator Maria Khoury, wife of Mayor David Khoury. In Palestinian Muslim tradition, alcohol is not sold, noted Maria Khoury, an author who has written of the Christian presence in the Holy Land.

Taybeh is believed by locals to be the Old Testament village of Ofra and the New Testament settlement of Efraim, the village in which it is recorded Jesus chose to stay with his disciples before his passion as written in the Gospel of John 11:54.