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LEADER page 48

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Born and raised in Pennsyl-
vania, Ms. Kreimer's involve-
ment in Israel-based community
work began in 1980 when, after
receiving her undergraduate de-
gree in urban planning and Russ-
ian studies, her Zionist beliefs led
her to Israel.
During a two-year stint with
Interns for Peace, Ms. Kreimer,
who had cultivated her commu-
nity-organizing skills working in
poor communities in the United
States, split her time living and
doing joint communal projects be-
tween the residents of the Arab
village of Tamra and those in the
Jewish village of Kiryat Ata.
When the war in Lebanon broke
out, Ms. Kreimer learned her
work was not in vain.
"We were living in Tamra and
Kiryat Ata during the Sabra and
Shatilla (refugee camp) killings
and trying to do cooperative ac-
tivities. Everything was normal,
but when the war broke out, sud-
denly all the men in Kiryat Ata
disappeared and a lot of people
in Tamra had relatives living in
Lebanon. It was like we were two
worlds 10 kilometers apart.
"In June we were supposed to
do our final projects with the
community members. But the
[Jewish] people who had not been
involved in the project for very
long said, 'Let's not push it,' and
they decided to cancel the project.
But the people who had been
working together all year long
said, We have to continue and
it's more important now.'
`The basic emotional and real
message was that once people get
to know each other, the relation-
ships are difficult to break," Ms.
Kreimer recalled.
Following that experience, Ms.
Kreimer returned to the United
States and received her master's
degree in policy planning from
Carnegie Mellon University. Af-
ter completing her degree, she
made aliyah and started up an
industry project through Interns
for Peace that worked with com-
panies that employed both Arabs
and Jews.

But in order to "level the play-
ing field," Ms. Kreimer decided
that it was not enough to better
relations between Arab employ-
ees and their Jewish employers.
So she set out to encourage co-
operative efforts between Jewish
and Arab businesspeople.
With a start-up grant of
$25,000 from Con Anima, a Eu-
ropean foundation that supports
projects in the Middle East, Ms.
Kreimer got to work. While in-
dustrialists such as Koor Indus-
tries' Naftali Blumenthal and
leading Arab businesspeople
such as Ibrahim Boulous and Ali
Kadamany were willing to sit on
the board, the challenge came in
trying to convince the then-Likud
government, which was sup-
portive of big businesses setting
up shop in Jewish development
towns, of the need to make Arabs
and small-business owners part
of the equation for economic de-
velopment.
Although Yitzhak Shamir's
government provided her with
little oxygen, Ms. Kreimer kept
going, and after Labor's electoral
victory in 1992, some new air
rushed in. In the first few years
of the Rabin government, na-
tional assistance for Arab towns
was increased and Arab sector-
based industrial zones and small-
business development centers
began sprouting.
With the 1993 Oslo agree-
ments and a change in Jewish Is-
raelis' attitude toward the
opportunities the Arab world of-
fered, the center's business be-
gan to thrive.
Instead of hustling Israeli com-
panies on behalf of little-known
Arab businesses, international
contingencies and Jewish indus-
trialists began approaching her.
"Suddenly, paradoxically, Is-
raelis began looking at Arabs as
economically important," said
Ms. Kreimer, noting that since
1994 Jewish Israeli requests for
joint-venture partners have dou-
bled to 200 per year.
Today, Ms. Kreimer's operat-
ing budget totals more than
$400,000, and she has expanded
her operation to Arab domains
beyond Israel and the territories.
She brought the first business
delegation from Jordan back in
1994 for a textile-industry con-
ference in Jerusalem and then
went on to organize regional con-
ferences for the software, plastics
and food industries.
Looking toward the future,
Ms. Kreimer says she hopes
to create 100 new business part-
nerships over the next five years
and to •work with Arabs in
helping them to gain access to
government planning min-
istries.
"It's important to take people
into account, especially when
they are 20 percent of the popu-
lation," Ms. Kreimer said. "This
is the only way to strengthen so-
ciety." III