An Entrepreneurial Path to Peace

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• Who Is Stef Wertheimer?

In May, 2006, Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett acquired an 80% stake in Iscar for $4 billion. Stacy Perman

Wertheimer's parks don't look like industrial zones. They are filled with clipped lawns and open-air sculpture gardens. Stacy Perman

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Job Creation and Education

Since Tefen, Wertheimer has established four additional industrial parks in Israel following the same model. To date, they have nurtured 175 companies, employ 5,000 people, and in 2007 produced collective sales of $750 million, 80% from exports. In 2003, Wertheimer established his sixth park, in Gebze, outside of Istanbul, Turkey. Today, Gebze has 70 companies employing 300 people.

In 1994, after eight years in the Israeli Air Force, Guy Cohen joined a group of about 20 former officers at Tefen. Wertheimer offered the group education, provided equipment, a workshop, and a basic salary. Cohen worked there for about two years preparing dies and molds for the plastic injection industry. "We had lectures and daily meetings with Wertheimer," says Cohen. "We were working like a private company that had to make a living. We had to make a product, find customers, and make a profit."

After about three years, Cohen decided to start his own company, Metalicone, a manufacturer of industrial metal precision parts, at the Lavon Industrial Park just south of Tefen. Last year, Cohen says, the 100-employee company, which exports to Germany and Switzerland, had $15 million in sales. "The two most important things I learned from Stef was to take pride in your work," he says. "You don't have to invent yourself. Try to make what is out there but do it even better."

According to Wertheimer, job creation works when it is combined with ongoing educational opportunities. Thus, education makes up a large part of the offerings at his industrial parks. In 1964 he established an industrial school providing technical education for young people (many of whom were dropouts and many of whom today are managers at Iscar and other companies). Wertheimer also initiated an educational system for the entire Galilee region offering computer courses, mentoring, and vocational training.

In 2000, Wertheimer, in conjunction with Tel Aviv University, launched the Arab-Jewish Entrepreneurship Course for fledgling entrepreneurs from across the country. Since its inception, some 230 students have attended the program. The course spawned several successful ventures including a chain of diet workshops launched by a female Arab entrepreneur who plans to expand into Jordan, and a joint Israeli-Palestinian company that makes premium olive oil.

The "Capitalist Kibbutz"

Wertheimer's parks look nothing like industrial zones. They are filled with clipped lawns and open-air sculpture gardens. Tefen includes a handful of art museums, and numerous concerts and festivals take place on the grounds. Several of the parks are located near manicured residential areas that Wertheimer established. It was Wertheimer's intention to showcase the beauty of industry and break the stereotype of manufacturing as something dirty and low-rent. For instance, at Tefen's dining room, waiters serve workers free lunch on cloth-covered tables. "I call this a capitalist kibbutz," says Wertheimer.

In Werteheimer's grand scheme, a host of similar industrial parks would stretch across the Levant, the non-oil producing nations along the spine of the former Ottoman Empire, through Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. "There are 90 million to 100 million people quarreling about who's right," he explains. "Israel is more successful than the Arabs, and I believe peace will come if we have similar income levels. This we can have, but we have to change from an agricultural society to an industrial one. It can be done. We've done it here in the Galilee, which is 20% of Israel. It is made up of Arabs and Jews, and unemployment is 4% here compared to 7.5% in Israel."

Wertheimer's vision hasn't always lined up with events on the ground. In 2000, one week before a groundbreaking ceremony was to take place at a joint Israeli-Palestinian industrial park outside of the Gaza Strip, the Intifada erupted, scuttling plans for the park that eight years later have yet to be revived. Similarly, plans to launch a park in Jordan have been shelved.

Still, he hasn't given up. "I'd like to see more neighbors put up more Tefens," he says. In the near future, Wertheimer has plans to create 10 additional parks in both Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

As he takes in the sweeping views of the Galilee and the hills of Lebanon (which were recently the scene of a ferocious war between Israel and Hezbollah), he says that the European Union or the U.S. needs to take an active role in pushing his vision forward. In 2002 he presented his ideas before the U.S. House of Representatives advocating a kind of Middle East Marshall Plan that he says would ultimately replace poverty and terrorism with a better quality of life and jobs. In March he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "I want everyone to have a job and to be busy. There will be no terrorism. I want an anti-oil story where we become rich through industry." After all, he says, "entrepreneurship comes down to opportunity."

Perman is a staff writer for BusinessWeek.com in New York.