Web Headdress

Hirbawi Textiles is located on a prosy thoroughfare on the suburbs of the Palestinian town Hebron.

To the stranger it looks similar to any other ageing factory. In the dank, strip-light illuminated interior there are rows of outworn machines with cogs wrapped in cobwebs.

But 3 years ago the assembly lines became the concentration of the world's media, when it became strong it was the final in the Palestinian Territories to create the keffiyeh, the normal Arab headdress and prime of one-time personality Yasser Arafat.

The Palestinian keffiyeh attention had suffered a unemployment subsequent to marketplace liberalisation measures beneath the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Wholesalers in the Palestinian Territories increasingly paid for cheaper versions of the headband from China, Jordan and Syria. A Hirbawi Textiles headband expenses around $6, whilst a Chinese keffiyeh expenses as small as $3.

For dawn workman Abdel Aziz El Taraki the pierce signalled the passing of the family run business.

Set up in 1961, the assembly lines proposed with only two weaving machines, but as the headscarf became synonymous with Palestinian nationalism, urge rapidly rose.

"Of march business used to be sufficient better. We used to have 15 machines working and it wasn't enough, you infrequently had to work for 24 hours to casing the demand," says El Taraki.

"In the 1980s, during the initial intifada, prolongation was covering everywhere from Gaza to Jerusalem and Ramallah. All alien keffiyeh sole here means a reduction sole for us.

"In the past you were carrying out really well, it then run-down until you only had two machines working in the factory."

Following the media attention came a inundate of inquiries about the factory.

Capitalising on the public's interest, the Hirbawi family set up an web page so orders from unfamiliar countries could be placed.

Around the same time the story had held the eye of the 'Young Professionals for Palestine', a organisation of internet activists formed at the time in Kuwait.

Group owner Noora Kassem says they were upset unfamiliar imports were destroying the meaning of the Palestinian scarf.

"Globalisation has authorised cheaper products to be done in other countries that obviously caring nothing about the identity of the product itself and a of the things you were disturbed about was the fact that that pile prolongation would take divided from the flawlessness of the product by ensuring it's not done in Palestine anymore," says Kassem.

"We felt similar to you had to mobilize to help the assembly lines obtain more customers, and to obtain a incomparable customer bottom and maybe maybe upgrade its own capacities and its capability to obtain more machines.

"So what you did is you we done a few sales by shopping a few keffiyehs, and sole them to people in Kuwait and attempted to obtain more people to purchase from the assembly lines themselves."

But notwithstanding the group's most appropriate efforts, the logistics of shopping and selling the keffiyehs from Kuwait became problematic.

"We finished up surroundings up the Facebook page so that people could right away attend to the factory. The owner is really aged and is a small bit resistant to changes in technology receiving place and so hopefully bettering to the changes will take them in to the new fold," she says.

"Of march you can't meddle and take their books and discuss it them how to do their business but you can help by marketing, by PR, by contacts and connectivity."

With more than 1,000 members the Facebook page is proof really popular.

"We've got people all over the world from Australia to India to South Africa," says Kassem.

"All over the Middle East, Arabs and non-Arabs alike, meddlesome in the summary and precisely what the keffiyeh stands for.

"A lot of people friend it with a conform accessory, but they were meddlesome to find out what the story of it is and that this is the final assembly lines and it came from Palestine."

Jouda Hirbawi, a of two sons who looks after the day-to-day running of the factory, welcomes the Facebook page.

He says the site has had a send repercussions on sales with up to 1,500 orders a month, often from America and Europe. But notwithstanding its success he says the Palestinian Authorities should do more to help made at home industries.

"The Chinese use inexpensive materials and inexpensive labour, so the product that comes here is really inexpensive and there is no way to vie with it honestly," explains Jouda.

"Of march no nation can anathema imports, but there are ways to manage them, for example, they should levy taxes on alien products. This way they will encouragement local producers who occupy a lot of people. This will help the local manage to buy as well."

Production is now up at the assembly lines with 8 machines producing more than 70 keffiyehs a day.

But with ageing technology and small indication of investment in the factory's infrastructure, the Hirbawis will be wakeful they contingency do more or face the day when their looms drop silent.