In Israel, Commerce amid Conflict

Michal Chelbin for TIME
Incubating Peter Assaf, CEO of Renopharm, in his lab at the NGT building

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From NGT's inception, Jews, Muslims and Christian Arabs have headed its portfolio of companies. Three of the ventures are Jewish-Arab partnerships. An Israeli Bedouin founded NGT's first funded start-up, which developed an herbal extract for lowering blood-glucose levels. NGT's management structure also embodies the incubator's mission of co-existence. Nasri Said, an Israeli Arab who coordinated Arab entrepreneurship in Israel's Office of the Chief Scientist (which sponsors incubators) and helped spearhead the effort to launch NGT, is its business-development manager and its acting CEO. A similar mosaic of Arabs and Jews is reflected in the support staff as well as in NGT's nine-member board and seven-person advisory council. The mix is maintained and applied broadly. At NGT the lingua franca is Hebrew, but the coffee is strictly Arabic.

Launched in 2002 during the height of the second Palestinian intifadeh , NGT has navigated a host of potentially debilitating issues. For starters, there is the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which sometimes boils over into tensions between Jews and Arabs in Israel. In the beginning, Said recounts, many Arab entrepreneurs approached NGT warily. They questioned the government's interest. He says he did much to allay fears by building on personal relationships. "The fact that this was a collaboration between Arab businessmen and Jews helped," he says. NGT could leverage the talent and ideas of Arab entrepreneurs while tapping the considerable pipeline of experience and connections of the Jews. Having both Arabs and Jews holding top management positions, he says, went a long way toward dispelling distrust.

While there were a number of Arab scientists and entrepreneurs, little had been done by either side of the divide to develop this sector outside of isolated pockets let alone integrate it into the larger Israeli tech industry. Helmi Kittani, an Arab co-director of the Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development who led the push to obtain government backing for NGT, says the notion of high-tech start-ups was simply alien to the Arab sector. As a result, "Arab scientists and engineers could not envision a route for realizing their dream of being a successful entrepreneur," he says. "Also, because Jews and Arabs traveled in different social and professional circles, the barriers to entry for Israeli Arabs were often insurmountable."

Eight years later, NGT says about 95% of the pool of Arab tech entrepreneurs in Israel have applied directly to NGT. The applicants go through a grueling vetting process that can take anywhere from nine months to two years. Three new start-ups are slated to join this year.

"I didn't come here with any ideology," says Jacob Bridger, the Jewish CEO of VPSign, who was tapped by its Arab founder, Belal Lehwany, an electronics engineer. The two men lived near each other in western Galilee and knew each other in their tech circles. However, Bridger says Lehwany specifically founded VPSign within the framework of NGT's commitment to pursuing both co-existence and technology ventures in the Arab sector. "Israeli-Arab entrepreneurs, while every bit as talented as their Jewish counterparts, lack inroads to the high-tech network, including venture capital, that is primarily run by Israeli Jews," says Bridger. "NGT, having both Jewish and Arab management, is able to bridge this gap and tap into this crucial network."

It's a sentiment with which Jafar Sabbah, Rad Dental's CEO, agrees. An Arab from Turan, outside Nazareth, he holds a law degree and an MBA and has substantial experience with both economics and co-existence, since he worked in economic development in Jerusalem. He also managed a project to create Israeli-Palestinian software joint ventures in the West Bank. "It is key to develop Arab entrepreneurs because the Jewish side is well served and well developed," Sabbah says. "We need to create capacity in this sector, which is why NGT was founded and is what draws an Arab like me here. Having a joint Arab-Israel incubator is the opportunity to exchange ideas. But it also breaks stereotypes."

Well, yes and no.