I BUSINESS

ALLEN - EDMONDS SALE

Stop by and take advantage of this opportunity to get 20% off
on the purchase of any Allen Edmonds Shoe in stock. Four of
our best-selling styles are shown below.

Arabs, Jews Find
Common Business Bond

JOEL BAINERMAN

Special to The Jewish News

D

SALE ENDS SATURDAY JULY 29

31455 Southfield Rd.
Birmingham
645-5560

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851-7727

espite the intifada
and the current state
of relations between
Israel and the Palestinians,
Arabs and Jews are finding
common ground for peaceful
co-existence through joint
ventures in the business and
commercial spheres.
Joint
ventures
in
agricultural areas are becom-
ing more frequent. Because of
the debts many Israeli farms
have accumulated recently,
credit is no longer available
from Israel's banks. The in-
tifada has ironically created a
surplus of investment capital
on the West Bank following a
restriction on foreign curren-
cy trading and other banking
investment activities. Thus,
local Arab financiers have
been offering Jewish farmers
credit to buy seeds, fertilizers
and other agricultural
supplies.
Another method of joint
cooperation is for Jewish
businessmen to acquire crops
at discounted prices from
Arab farmers in Gaza and to
put an "Israeli cetificate of
origin" on them so they can
be marketed in Israeli
supermarkets.
Official sources in Israel's
large marketing organiza-
tions say this type of "smug-
gling" has increased
dramatically over the past
two years and now it is
estimated to be more than 40
percent of all the agricultural
produce marketed in Israel.
Meanwhile, the phenome-
non of Jewish-Arab en-
treprenuers joining forces to
create new businesses is still
in its infancy stage.
Mustafa Avromi runs the
Center for Jewish-Arab
Economic Development, a
non-profit organization for
assisting Jewish and Arab en-
trepreneurs to establish joint
ventures. The Center is the
initiative of The Interns for
Peace organization, an
American-based group
'dedicated to furthering Arab-
Jewish co-existence.,
"Instead of the typical
situation of an Arab worker
employed in a Jewish
business in rIbl Aviv or Haifa,
in the type of joint-venture we
are promoting, the Jewish en-
trepreneur would supply
managerial and financial ex-
perience, and investment
capital, while the Arab part-
ner contributes his familiari-
ty to the market," Avromi
says. "The greatest oppor-

tunities for growth are in the
service sector which general-
ly tend to be underdeveloped
in Arab towns."
Avromi points to Ahmad
Jabrin and Yihzhak Davoush
as the prototypes of a suc-
cessful Arab-Jewish joint ven-
ture. In the small Arab
village of Baka el-Garbia
which is north of Tel Aviv,
these two entrepreneurs
established the Eiron Garage.
Located in the center of the
intifada, their Volkswagen-
Audi service center has
become a bastion of Arab-
Jewish co-existence.
Their friendship began 10
years ago at a car dealership
in Tel Aviv, where they work-
ed together as mechanics.
After the late president of
Egypt, Anwar Sadat came to
Jerusalem in 1977, the two
decided upon an automobile
service center in Jabrin's
Arab village.
"The hope that President
Sadat instilled in Israel that
peace was possible inspired us
to establish the partnerhsip,"
Yitzhak says. "Our motto is
business through peace and
peace through business."
While at the beginning
Jews from the surrounding
areas were afraid to come to
an Arab village to get their
car repaired, now "many
come just to drink coffee, even
when they don't have a pro-
blem with their car.

The Jewish
entrepreneur
would supply
managerial
experience.

"If our two societies will
assist in helping other en-
treprenuers like us, to show
that business and peace are a
great mix, there will be a
great future for cooperation
like this," Ahmed says. "It
will create common goals,
common interests and a com-
mon dialogue."
The most typical type of
joint-venture arrangement is
for Palestinian businesses to
finish products for Jewish
firms on a sub-contracting
basis.
A dozen or so firms in the
Ramallah and Nablus area
maintain kosher production
lines to sell to the religious
market in Israel. For in-
stance, the United Trading
company produces much of
Israel's tehina (a Middle East
sesame seed-based sauce)
which is sold to Israeli fac-
tories who package it and

