Stef Wertheimer is a gruff, 74-year-old, self-educated multi-millionaire who escaped the Nazis when he was a boy. He founded ISCAR Ltd., a large toolmaker, served in the Israeli parliament and was a close friend of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Here’s an example of how his mind works: In 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle put an embargo on sales of all French weapons to Israel. So Wertheimer started manufacturing engine blades. Soon enough, Israel had its own formidable aircraft industry that enhanced its security.

INVESTING IN PEACE

Now, comes an idea that sounds obvious but has not actually been tried much in the region-good jobs for Palestinians. Starting in 1982, Wertheimer has built four large industrial parks within Israel, with a fifth on the way in the Galilee. According to his figures, they now account for 10 percent of Israel’s gross domestic product. He has expanded into Turkey and tried to build one near the Gaza strip a few years ago, but the Palestinian intifada interrupted those plans. Instead of discouraging him, that failure has prompted Wertheimer to try again, this time in Jordan, where the conditions are more favorable. He’s in the United States this week peddling his idea with the help of the Harvard Business School. “If the Israelis and Arabs were busy meeting deadlines for the supply of merchandise to Japan, they would have neither the time nor the desire to fight each other,” he says.

There are limits to the economic argument. Palestinians waging war on Israel today are doing so against their clear economic self-interest. But many of the jobs they hold are not good ones. Wertheimer’s idea is to tap the entrepreneurial trading instinct of the Arab people (the Middle East was traditionally one of the great trading crossroads of the world) and “incubate” more than 100 small export businesses in products like plastics, textiles and software. “The businesses would be modest, at least at first, but would give them a sense that something good was happening,” he says. Wertheimer doesn’t need scads of money (the industrial park would cost about $1 billion) and he shuns any government involvement. All he wants is a little long-term thinking on the part of the global business community.

RESURRECTING THE LEVANT

Wertheimer makes a series of compelling historical arguments. The centuries-old struggle between Germany and France didn’t end until the border region took off economically, with the help of the Marshall Plan, and everyone stopped fighting. Business becomes a surrogate for war. The economic miracle nations of recent years have all thrived on competition with more powerful neighbors: South Korea was eager to stick it to Japan, which had dominated it for hundreds of years. Finland had been in debt to Russia. “Why did Ireland make peace?” Wertheimer asks. “One reason was in order to sell more to Great Britain.”

He envisions Jordan, which has the best political leadership in the Arab world, as a neutral Switzerland or Singapore, which was itself poor only a generation ago. It sounds crazy, given Jordan’s severe poverty and landlocked status, but with a good road, the Israeli port of Haifa is just an hour away. And no one else is going to play that role in the Arab world. The oil-rich Gulf states certainly aren’t doing the job. “Oil is like hashish,” he says, arguing that it undermines the entrepreneurial values needed for long-term success.

To ease the enmity in his own neighborhood, Wertheimer offers a few other outside-the-envelope suggestions. For centuries, the region was called the Levant and he suggests returning to that definition. He envisions Israel, Jordan and Turkey defining themselves as Mediterranean. By setting themselves up apart from the rest of the Arab world, they can stimulate a little healthy “football-style competition.”

This may sound pie-in-the-sky, but it comes from a hard-headed, no-bull businessman. “Look, you can only make peace if you have a vested interest in it,” Stef Wertheimer concludes. “If we’d done what I’m talking about 20 years ago, we wouldn’t be having these problems.”