NIR AKIVA, Israel – Assaf Galai stands at the end of a row of cabernet sauvignon vines that are hibernating during Israel’s short winter. He remembers what it looked like when he moved to this Negev desert village more than 20 years ago.

“When we bought this land there was nothing here – no pavements, no roads, no sewage,” the 58-year-old vintner told The Circuit. “It was a ruined territory with villages that were bankrupt. People here said this is not an area for growing wine and it won’t succeed. For me it was like a natural casino, and I thought I had a 50-50 chance of winning.”

Galai’s is an estate winery, meaning that he grows all of the grapes he uses to make his 10,000 bottles of prize-winning wines in Nir Akiva, 60 miles (100 km) south of Tel Aviv. His flagship wine, Casa Negev, a blend of 70% merlot and 30% cabernet sauvignon,  won gold medals last year at Israel’s Terravino Mediterranean International Wine & Spirit Challenge. Another best-seller is the blanc de noirs, a white wine made with black grapes, in this case cabernet sauvignon.

What makes his wines unique, said Galai, is the “terroir,” that amalgam of soil, climate and weather conditions that make each wine-growing area in the world different. Roughly 60% of Israel is desert. “It’s poor land but it gives the wine a nice quality. You can actually taste the dusty desert flavors in the wine.” Galai said his winery’s terroir is “loess,” a geological term that means it’s made up of windblown dust and silt – in this case about 17% limestone.

The great difference in temperature between night and day in the desert is good for the grapes, and the lack of rainfall means that fungus, which can be a problem in other wine-growing areas, does not pose issues here.

The Galai estate is part of a group of almost 40 wineries and vineyards that are working together to expand wine tourism in the Negev, which houses only 10% percent of Israel’s population. Others include the Midbar, Pinto, Nana Estate, Neot Semadar and Sde Boker wineries. The effort is being spearheaded by the Merage Foundation Israel, a family fund that has been involved in developing the Negev since 2005. 

Israel’s emergence as a maker of fine wines has developed over the past 30 years, starting with the Golan Heights Winery, built on land Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. While Israeli wines were once dismissed as sweet and syrupy because they were largely produced for sacramental purposes, today there are more than 300 wineries in Israel, 65 of which won medals at the 2020 Decanter World Wine Awards held in London’s Canary Wharf.

The Negev winemakers represent “a new wave of pioneers,” Nicole Hod, Merage’s executive director, told The Circuit. “There is a powerful story here of archaeology, sociology and tourism. The Nabateans grew wine here 2,000 years ago.”

In the eastern part of the Negev near the city of Arad, the Yatir winery is also making prize-winning wines. Yatir is owned by one of Israel’s largest wineries, Carmel, and was established in 2000. Today it produces 150,000 bottles, a third of which are exported.

Among the Yatir wines, Har Amasa is a well-reviewed blend of petit Verdot, cabernet sauvignon, syrah, malbec and tannat that is aged for a year in small oak barrels. 

The 2014 Har Amasa was “surprisingly fresh and rather elegant,” international critic Mark Squires said in his tasting notes for Wine Advocate. “Right now, this looks like a winner, and I’m leaning up. It does have a few things to prove in the cellar. At worst, it is a solid wine with some distinction and sophistication in demeanor.”

Yatir’s wines are kosher while Galai’s are not. Certifying a wine as kosher means it has been supervised by observant Jews from the time the grapes are crushed until the wine is bottled. It also means that winemakers who are not observant like Assaf Galai are not allowed to possess the keys to their own wineries. Wines that are exported are almost always kosher as the market abroad is mostly religious Jews.

The Yatir grapes are grown in a forest that was originally planted in the 1960s to stop the desert from encroaching on fertile land. There are remains of ancient wine presses in the area, meaning wine was made here thousands of years ago.

“We don’t get much rain and [when] the vine suffers a little, you get the best wine,” Yatir’s export manager, Etti Edri, told The Circuit.

The Merage Foundation has launched a new website as part of an effort to create a Negev wine “appellation,” a legally defined and protected geographical area that originated in 18th century Europe and identifies where the grapes for a wine are grown. Wineries in the Judean Hills outside Jerusalem established an appellation in 2020. Elsewhere in the Middle East, Lebanon has an established wine industry, best known for Chateau Musar, a winery north of Beirut that grows its grapes in the Beqaa Valley. Muslim prohibitions on drinking alcohol has limited the development of wine production in the region, though Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia have active wine industries.

Hod Stroh said she also intends to lay out a Negev wine route so that tourists can plot a wine route and drive through the desert from winery to winery.

The new Negev website lists events happening in the region as well as background information on the area. The website launched in January, comes as a successful annual “Darom Adom” festival – meaning the “Red South” – kicks off, celebrating the carpet of crimson anemone buttercup flowers that bloom in early spring in the Negev.

Hod Stroh said the Darom Adom model appeals mostly to Israeli tourists who come to see the flowers, perhaps have a meal and then head home. She said she hopes the wine tourism will be different, with people staying overnight in several upscale hotels like the Six Senses Shaharut, where a room costs $860 a night, in Hevel-Eilot or Beresheet for $390 a night in Mitzpeh Ramon. 

For both international tourists and local Israelis to spend more time in the Negev, there have to be more restaurants and more hotel rooms.

“In order for tourists to come and spend the night we need to strengthen the Negev from a culinary perspective,” Hod Stroh said. “There are not a lot of good restaurants in the Negev, but it’s a chicken-and-egg problem.”

Guy Haran, the owner of Vinspiration, which leads wine tours around the world, said the Negev can be a good example of how to grow wine in a time of growing global concern about climate change. 

“As the world becomes warmer and drier, we need to find ways to grow wine in changing conditions, and everyone looks to the Negev,” Haran told The Circuit. 

Haran led a Merage-funded trip to Barolo, in the Italian Piedmont, to show the winemakers how a wine region was created in Italy. “My end goal is to get Israel to become a wine destination for people from around the world,” Haran said. “Israeli wine has made amazing strides, and wine tourism can be the anchor for cultural tourism.”

TEL AVIV – From the outside, the Tel Aviv Textile and Fashion Center looks like a standard Israeli office building. Built starting in the 1960s in the era’s Brutalist architectural style, the center boasts six high-rise towers and a common space with a sprinkling of cheap stores and workman’s cafés that serve basic Israeli fare.

Architecturally daring for its day, this hulking whitewashed structure – one of the most iconic landmarks along the city’s coastline – has long been in decline both as an industry hub and an office option for emerging companies. Much of the expansive, concrete complex now stands peeling and neglected.

Cue the arrival of the Brown Hotel Group. One of the country’s fastest-growing hotel chains, its motif is setting up shop in unlikely places and in the process regenerating and reimagining some of the more down-and-out locations as sustainable and affordable tourist hubs.

Among its latest offering is Brut – a play on Brutalist – a 224-room boutique hotel that sits interspersed throughout various floors in Gaon House, one of the Textile and Fashion Center’s towers. 

The hotel opened last April with just 182 rooms, but as business and companies ended their leases in the crumbling building, Brown took over the space, renovating and opening more rooms and facilities as travelers began to return to Israel amid relaxed COVID-19 restrictions.

It’s part of the hotel operator’s urban renewal philosophy, Shahaf Segal, PR manager and spokeswoman for the Brown Hotel Group, explained to The Circuit. She listed a similar process for the group’s 13 other hotels dotted around the city (there are also now Brown Hotels in Jerusalem, Eilat, Greece and Cyprus), as well as some now under construction in other iconic landmarks, including one slated to open in the historic former Histadrut worker’s union building.

Each hotel, some with just a handful of rooms and others more expansive like Brut, has a slightly different vibe, but the overall goal is to convert existing buildings, as well as the areas around them, into reasonably priced lodgings and tourist centers in expensive cities.

“We are taking unoccupied spaces and turning them into positive spaces,” Segal said, pointing to the reception desk, which still shares space with a security team servicing the remaining offices in the building, and to the hotel’s back office, which until recently was occupied by a hair clinic offering transplants in Turkey.

The intriguing and intricate process of renewal and replacement can be seen throughout the hotel. Brut’s rooms now occupy the first, second, third, seventh and 14th floors, and are still interspersed with a medical clinic, a car rental office, insurance brokers and accountants.

And there is a range of different room styles, spanning from a basic “urban room” to an executive suite with a breathtaking sea view to a two-room family suite replete with a kitchenette. All the rooms are simple in design and practical, and all incorporate unique elements of the building’s original architecture with many of the signature features of a Brown Hotel: wire metal shelving, ecologically friendly soaps and a coffee maker.

In the executive suite on the 14th floor, unparalleled views of the Tel Aviv coastline and the sea beyond fill the purposely slanting windows, which the building’s designers hoped would be effective in deflecting the powerful rays of the Middle Eastern sun. Now they give guests the feeling they are floating above the earth or have been set adrift to sea.

On the seventh floor, the VIP lounge contains a modest conference center for business meetings or small gatherings. Its colorful decor captures the heart of the hotel’s urban renewal process, with re-upholstered and reconstructed ‘70s style furniture, couches, bookcases and even a collection of typically drab Israeli pottery from that era.  

A third-floor sun deck also boasts views of the Mediterranean and Brown’s signature hot tubs. On the ground floor, the center’s long-neglected communal areas have been spruced up and furnished with comfortable outdoor couches, hammocks and oversized plants for both guests and the remaining office workers to enjoy.

Also on the ground floor, Brown has taken over a long-forgotten restaurant, reopening it as the Kilometrage, with dishes created by celebrity chef Idan Bushari, winner of Israel’s “Next Restaurant” reality show. In the morning, the restaurant space doubles as the hotel’s breakfast buffet (which is a modest but delicious Israeli-style breakfast), but in the evening the music is turned up and the well-stocked bar and taboun-themed menu attract young Tel Avivians looking to be wined and dined.

And the Brut is not the only Brown group hotel to find a new home in this aging office complex. In an adjacent tower sits WOM, one of the group’s less expensive affiliates. Not exactly a hotel, at least not in the classic sense, and though it veers towards the communal lodging style of a hostel that is popular across Europe and in Israel, Segal calls it a “boutique pod hotel.”

Inside the converted space, more than 100 rooms line three long hallways. Stacked like a Tetris, the tiny rooms (which feel unexpectedly spacious inside) offer both single, two singles and king-size beds either low down or up on a bunk. Aside from the bed, there’s space to store luggage, a desk, a sink and a safe. Toilets and showers are shared, one per three rooms, and are cleaned by hotel staff between each use – a phone app governs access.

“We are maximizing the space to allow affordable beds in an expensive city,” said Lihi Gerstner, co-founder, designer and owner of the WOM, who describes the concept as similar to WeWorks — but for travelers.

An architect by trade, Gerstner, who opened Tel Aviv’s first pod hotel in 2019 on nearby Allenby Street, explained that after years of traveling for work, she recognized the need to create a hotel for people who wanted a place to rest their heads while traveling but one that would not detract from the overall experience of visiting a city.

And, she believes that such accommodation, with enhanced communal space, is really the way forward for adventure seekers of all ages determined to travel the world.

“I think people are realizing that they want to spend more money on experiences when they travel and less on accommodation,” concluded Gerstner, who is in the process of expanding WOM into other parts of the office tower.

The writer was a guest of the Brown Hotel Group. A stay in WOM ranges from  142NIS-300NIS ($40-$85) depending on room type and season. Brut rooms range from 315NIS-1,200NIS ($90-$342).

BEIT HAEMEK, Israel – Beekeepers around the world are engaged in a desperate battle for survival. Devastated by rising temperatures, pesticides and mite infestations, honeybee colonies are collapsing in record numbers. More than 35% of the world’s bees die each year due to “colony collapse disorder,” in which entire hives perish at once.

An Israeli startup aims to help commercial beekeepers deal with the phenomenon through the use of robotic hives that employ artificial intelligence to maintain optimal conditions, in hopes of helping bees survive the modern world.

“If every hive would have its own beekeeper 24/7, you wouldn’t see colony collapse at all,” Saar Safra, the CEO and co-founder of Beewise, told The Circuit. “This is what the robot does.”

The beehive disorder derives from several interconnected issues: global warming, lack of biodiversity, pesticides, pests and diseases that developed in the past 50 years against which  bees have no natural defenses. Beewise has developed a self-contained colony of hives, powered by solar panels and connected with Bluetooth, that enables a small robotic arm, equipped with cameras and precision sensors, to monitor a group of hives for common problems. The “BeeHome” can also harvest the honey automatically and collect it in a dedicated container.

“Imagine a bee leaves the hive and goes foraging. Then she’s poisoned by pesticides. Then it gets really warm, so she’s boiling. And then she gets back home, and there’s not enough food because there’s a lack of biodiversity. She doesn’t have a chance.” Safra said.

Since its founding in 2018, Beewise has raised about $120 million from venture capital firms including New York-based Insight Partners, Corner Ventures, based in Palo Alto, Calif.,  and Tel Aviv’s Fortissimo Capital and Lool Ventures. One of the investors is Sanad AD, a VC based in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, where the climate is especially challenging. Sanad AD, which launched in 2015, has investments in health care, real estate, automobiles, emerging technologies and security.

Bees can’t survive in the UAE during the summer. Many Gulf states practice seasonal beekeeping, purchasing bees in the fall for their winter crops and then letting them die in the summer. In the BeeHome, the bees can “oversummer” inside the hive, receiving sugar water rather than going out and foraging, with the thermostat keeping the hive at a survivable temperature, so they can reemerge once the weather cools. Bees in colder climates in Europe and North America are used to “overwintering,” when they stay inside their hives and maintain the temperature at 35 C (95 F) by beating their wings.

In a lychee grove outside Kibbutz Beit HaEmek in northern Israel, the bees don’t look like they’re using cutting-edge technology. They’re buzzing away, setting off from the Beehome to forage or returning to the structure with bright yellow pollen on their hind legs. The entrances are close together, but bees can identify their hive based on the pheromones of their queen and their color-coded entrance in purple, orange and green (Bees can’t identify other colors, like red).

It’s inside the hive where the tech comes into play. Honeycomb frames are arranged like a library, with each frame sitting on the shelf like a book. A robotic arm slowly plucks a selected frame from the shelf to examine it. The robot moves slowly, so as not to disturb the bees, taking three minutes to remove the frame. Then the robot uses something like a hair dryer to gently blow the bees off the frame it wants to inspect. It checks the frame for a number of data points, like the amount of honey, the presence of mites or the number of cells with worker bee larva.

The BeeHome uses AI and algorithms to determine if a hive is getting ready to swarm, or naturally divide, and take steps to avoid that process. If the frame has honey ready to harvest, the robot inserts it into a small centrifuge, and spins it until the honey separates from the comb and collects in a small container.

The algorithms seem to be working. Beewise has an 8% colony collapse rate compared to the 35% global rate, said Safra.

“Bees are starving and malnourished in most places,” professor Sharoni Shafir, the director of the B. Triwaks Bee Research Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Circuit. “The world’s population is increasing at an alarming rate, there are so many people and we need to feed them.”

Israel leads the field in bee technology, with at least half a dozen companies integrating tech into beekeeping. According to CrunchBase, Beewise is the best-funded initiative by far, with $120 million in funding, followed by Israel’s BeeHero with $20 million. The next largest company is Beeflow, in Argentina, which develops customized feed for bees to enhance the bee’s immune system. Other bee tech companies include Bulgaria’s Pollenity, which includes tech advances such as a robotic dancing bee to help bees locate the best flowers for pollination (Bees communicate food locations through their “waggle dance”).  

Because Israel is a small country, almost everyone involved in bee tech passed through the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Agriculture, and most sat in one of Shafir’s classes. They’re in regular contact, sharing information and research. “The idea that knowledge is power, that’s something we can learn from the bees,” he said. “Bees are so successful as a social species because their communication is so successful.”

In the past 18 months, Beewise has grown from 20 employees to 150. More than 100 are located in Israel, and the rest are in the headquarters in Oakland, Calif. Israel is the R&D heart of the operation, with a cheery open-space office accented in yellow and black on the kibbutz. Safra said the company made a conscious effort to recruit software and hardware developers from Israel’s Arab minority, by advertising with billboards in surrounding Arab villages. Today, about 25% of Beewise workers are Arab.

Currently, Beewise is concentrating on research and development and slowly rolling out more BeeHomes in the U.S., one of the largest agriculture markets. Safra said the company also plans to work close to home in the Middle East, but the market is much smaller. Today, Israel has about 100,000 hives across the entire country, and other countries in the region have even fewer. In comparison, a large commercial beekeeper in the U.S. has about 50,000 hives.

What keeps Safra up at night is that bee colony collapse is growing at a faster rate than any single company can address.

“Our formal goal is to save the bees, that’s why we exist,” he said. “But you need to get to a certain scale when you can really make a dent on the global population. That scale requires tens of thousands of these devices in the field, and we only have a little over a thousand. So we still have some way to go until we can really make a real impact on the planet.”

TEL AVIV, Israel – While regulators scrutinize a bid from the United Arab Emirates for Israel’s largest insurance company, the Gulf state will be looking to broaden its interests in the Israeli financial services industry, Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani Al Zeyoudi told The Circuit.

Al Zeyoudi said the offer last week from a consortium led by Abu Dhabi-based ADQ for a controlling stake in Israel’s Phoenix Group was “just another signal that relations are going to grow.” Israeli insurers, financial services companies and fintech startups are among the most attractive candidates for partnerships and acquisitions, he said.

In a video interview from his office in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, Al Zeyoudi also said he expects ties between the two countries to strengthen under returning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said the free-trade agreement that the UAE and Israel ratified on Dec. 11 would likely reach its goal of generating an annual $10 billion in bilateral economic activity by 2026, two years ahead of the ministry’s earlier projections. Two years after the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan signed agreements to normalize relations with Israel, he said more Arab countries are getting ready to engage with the Jewish state.

“There is a growing appetite across the region for collaboration and cooperation,” Al Zeyoudi said. “There are now six countries in the Arab world that have recognized Israel and the benefits of these ties will accumulate as trade flows increase. Obviously, we cannot decide for other countries because it’s [a matter of] sovereign rights. But I’m sure through these engagements and the results from our economic and bilateral trade, it’s a signal to everyone how important and how powerful this cooperation is.”

In his own efforts to understand the Israeli financial services market, Al Zeyoudi said he developed a warm relationship with Samer Haj-Yehia, chairman of Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest lender. Haj-Yehia, an Arab citizen of Israel, was a surprise speaker in October at the mammoth Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia, even though the two countries do not have diplomatic relations. Al Zeyoudi first met the banker during a meeting with Israeli business leaders in Dubai on Sept. 15, 2020, the day the Abraham Accords were signed in Washington. “Since then, the relationship is very close with him,” Al Zeyoudi said. Haj-Yehia, who also spoke at conferences in the UAE last month, acknowledged through a Leumi spokesman that he has met with the Emirati minister and declined to comment further.

Al Zeyoudi, 40, who was previously minister of climate change and the environment, studied at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma for a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering. He earned an MBA at the New York Institute of Technology and later went to the SKEMA Business School in Lille, France, for a PhD in strategy, program and project management.

In the insurance deal, Al Zeyoudi said ADQ, a holding company owned by the Abu Dhabi emirate, is prepared to confront concerns expressed in Israel about foreign control of Phoenix, the largest manager of employee pension funds. The investment group it leads signed a term sheet last week with Phoenix’s controlling shareholders, U.S. investment firms Centerbridge Partners and Gallatin Point Capital, to buy between 25-30% of the company’s shares for as much as $800 million.

“It’s all been studied very well and thoroughly from both sides,” he said. “No deals will be signed without the full picture [being] put on the table, being discussed, being tackled, and then we move on to the next level.”

The Marker, an Israeli financial newspaper, called the proposed sale “an irresponsible and unprecedented act of folly” because it gives the UAE too much power over the pension savings of Israeli citizens. A 2017 bid by China’s Fujian Yango Group to buy control of Phoenix was withdrawn after it was rejected by Israel’s Capital Market, Insurance and Savings Authority.

If ADQ’s offer is accepted by the regulator, the deal would be one of the biggest between the UAE and Israel since the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala bought a 22% stake in an offshore Israeli natural gas field last year for $1 billion.

“It probably won’t be approved easily and it won’t be a quick decision,” said Nimrod Goren, president of Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, and a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “There will be attempts to put all sorts of safeguards around it,” he told The Circuit.

Regarding Netanyahu’s comeback, Al Zeyoudi said the UAE has grown used to Israel’s frequent government transitions and doesn’t expect political changes to interrupt growth in trade between the two countries. Some Israeli investors have expressed concern that cabinet members in Netanyahu’s proposed government who want to annex the West Bank will reignite conflict with the Palestinians.

”Believe me, this will not affect the economy because everyone wants the numbers to grow,” Al Zeyoudi said. Netanyahu “was part of the initiation of the Abraham Accords and I’m sure he will make sure of its success.”

In the interview, Al Zeyoudi touched on how the collapse of FTX has affected the UAE’s efforts to promote itself as a world center for cryptocurrency trading and research.

“Obviously there’s concern when a high-profile business appears to have violated its customers’ trust in this way,” he said. “It offers a clear signal about the need for regulations, consumer protections, proper law and international conventions in the sphere.”

Given his experience as environment minister and a previous post as the UAE’s representative to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), which is based in Abu Dhabi, Al Zeyoudi said he’s looking forward to next year, when his country plays host to the U.N.’s annual climate change conference, COP28.

Beyond his desire to showcase cooperation between government and private industry in converting to sustainable energy sources, Al Zeyoudi said the UAE will also highlight the deal it brokered in which Jordan will provide solar energy to Israel in exchange for water from an Israeli desalination plant on the Mediterranean. The three sides signed a memorandum of understanding last month at the COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

“We’re looking forward to bringing the world here,” he said. “Sustainability is embedded with us as a nation. We have diversified our economy and diversified our energy mix. This is the story that we want to bring to the table, to discuss the real impact and the practical actions that we have taken on the ground.”

Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund that manages more than $280 billion in assets, placed one of its most senior executives, Waleed Al Mokarrab, in charge of the unit that handles interests in the UAE, including projects with Israel.

Al Mokarrab, who this week was named interim CEO of Mubadala’s UAE Investments platform, will take over for Musabbeh Al Kaabi, who next month will move to the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) to head its newly established Low Carbon Solutions & International Growth division, the company said in a statement.

As Mubadala’s deputy group CEO, Al Mokarrab also served as deputy CEO of the investments platform during a period in which UAE and Israel normalized diplomatic relations under the September 2020 Abraham Accords. He supervised the Mubadala team that led some of the Gulf state’s most prominent Israeli investments, among them the 22% stake Mubadala Petroleum bought last year in Israel’s Tamar natural gas field, off its Mediterranean coast. The pumping operation at Tamar is run by Chevron Oil Co., the second-largest U.S. energy company, which owns a 25% stake in the field.

Mubadala distributed $20 million last year to six Israeli venture capital funds – Mangrove Capital Partners, Entrée Capital, Aleph Capital, Viola Ventures, Pitango and MizMaa – to invest in promising startups, according to the Wall Street Journal. All told, Mubadala’s investments in Israeli tech companies have amounted to $100 million, the Wall Street Journal reported in January.

Trade between Israel and the UAE reached $1.4 billion during the first three quarters of 2022, already beating the $1.2 billion posted in the previous year. After signing a free-trade agreement in May, both countries predicted that the volume would reach $10 billion within five years.

Visiting Abu Dhabi this week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said his country’s ties with the UAE “took off so beautifully” in 2020 and “now we need to reach cruising altitude, meaning upgrading the relationship even further.” UAE President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed responded, “This is a new relationship and we are trying to build a very strong bridge between our two countries.”

As deputy group CEO, Al Mokarrab has “strategic oversight of the company’s broad investment portfolio and special projects at the group level,” according to the company’s website. The UAE Investments platform is “Mubadala’s vehicle contributing to accelerate the transformation of the UAE’s economy by building homegrown world class champions, fostering vibrant industrial and commercial clusters, and engaging with global partners,” the website says.

Al Mokarrab holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University. He is a board member at the Cleveland Clinic, one of the top-rated U.S. hospitals, and chairman of its branch in Abu Dhabi.

GOLAN HEIGHTS – It’s not very often in Israel that you wake up to the sight of more than a dozen gleaming Ferraris, but then again, there aren’t too many places far enough from the country’s bustling center to warrant a serious road trip for the Italian power rides – or exclusive enough to draw in the owners of such luxury.

That’s why, on a recent weekday morning, the Ferrari Owners Club of Israel roared onto the grounds of the Pereh Hotel – the year-and-a-half-old luxury resort that sits quietly tucked away on the majestic Golan Heights – and parked their colorful cars for a rich and pampering breakfast in the hotel’s sweet-tasting Rouge restaurant. 

With sweeping views of the Galilee, the Pereh Mountain Resort sits on an expansive plot of Israel’s most northern plateau. Far from the country’s obvious tourist spots in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, Pereh, which literally means wild in Hebrew, captures the raw and thorny beauty of the Golan Heights, while at the same time offering a tranquility that puts visitors immediately at one with nature.

It also captures a unique slice of history for Israel in particular and the broader region in general, with the hotel’s owner and an array of local designers working hard to preserve the past, while at the same time carefully adding a new layer of comfort and opulence.

In fact, sometimes it is hard to imagine, among the serenity and luxury, that this was once the scene of brutal conflict, wars and a geopolitical, colonial agreement that ultimately shaped the current Middle East. 

Pereh stands along the old Haifa-Damascus Road at the site of what is known as the Upper or French Customs House. It was here in 1916 that the British and French diplomats, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, signed a secret treaty at the end of World War I carving up the former Ottoman Empire to create the borders of the countries we know today: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and what was British Mandated Palestine, now Jordan, Israel and the West Bank.

At the heart of the sprawling property, inside a ragged building that remains largely untouched, is a rudimentary museum paying homage to this game-changing agreement and to the creation of the hotel that now sits here. 

An antique map with the demarcation lines and the original colonial contract hang without commentary high on scorched and peeling walls alongside black-and-white portraits of Sykes and Picot, as well as an ominous photograph of the handshake that essentially sealed the fate of the entire Middle East.

Nearby is a color photograph of Leo Glaser, Pereh’s founder and owner. A defense and security consultant, Glaser apparently became enchanted with the Golan Heights as a teenager in his native Buenos Aires after hearing the news that the notorious Israeli spy Eli Cohen had been hanged in Damascus, Syria. Cohen – who succeeded in infiltrating to the highest levels of the Syrian military before his execution in 1965 – quickly became Glaser’s hero and the impetus for his subsequent aliyah, and later a long military and secret service career.

It was also what pushed Glaser to purchase this parcel of land in 2014. According to legend, Cohen had succeeded in convincing the Syrian army to plant eucalyptus trees at army bases across the Golan, which was then in Syrian hands; he said it would keep the soldiers shielded from the sun. However, it is believed that knowing the location of these trees is what assisted the Israel Defense Forces in identifying Syrian military targets, allowing it to capture the area during the 1967 Six-Day war. 

Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, a move still not accepted by most of the world, although the U.S., under former President Donald Trump, recognized Israel’s sovereignty there in a contentious 2019 declaration. 

A cluster of Cohen’s eucalyptus trees, as well as several abandoned Syrian army bunkers beneath them, now stand on the horizon not far from the young grapefruit, pomelo and lemon trees in Pereh’s newly planted garden. Below their swaying branches is a small plaque that stands as a tribute to Cohen, whose remains are still said to be buried somewhere in Damascus.

“It was Cohen’s story that prompted Glaser to make aliyah and eventually buy this land,” Pereh’s general manager, Neri Eldar, tells The Circuit as we tour the hotel and the grounds.

Eldar explained that Glaser’s rough plan to turn it into a hotel was slowed by the process of clearing and cleaning up the abandoned and crumbling structures, removing leftover landmines and navigating the snake-filled, booby-trapped bunkers. It took Glaser nine years to restore the Bauhaus buildings that still stand here, remove the war debris and reimagine the wild, often hostile Golan landscape into a luxury resort.

With the help of investors, he finally opened the doors to Pereh in June 2021.

“The vibe here is very much connected to the natural surroundings,” said Eldar, describing how the hotel aims to mix history, nature and tranquility, with luxury and exclusivity. 

“It’s an homage to nature,” she said. 

A short stay at Pereh is a uniquely pleasurable experience. From the moment of arrival at the grand metal gates to the well-shaded and welcoming courtyard, replete with a fire pit and seating area, the resort is refreshing and inspiring.

Two of the original French buildings have been finely restored to contain the more exclusive rooftop studios and garden suites. Two new constructions with an additional 22 rooms – a mix of garden and balcony accommodations – surround a tranquil infinity pool and open-air whirlpool.

Each room combines locally found, natural materials – think recycled wood, iron and stone – in its design. Discarded Syrian army beds have been reimagined into lounging chairs, the moody basalt rock found scattered across the Golan has been reused for flooring, walling and other detailed decoration. Also used to decorate the hotel’s walls inside and out are local and international artwork, many incorporating organic materials and themes. 

Rooms at the hotel start at $650 per night for two persons, bed and breakfast; and from $890 on weekends and holidays.

In a low, stand-alone building that was once a horse stable sits the cozy reception area, which also features a well-stocked bar and, below, a wine cellar offering expertly presented tastings of boutique wines from Israeli vineyards. 

Another of the newer buildings houses the spa, which offers an array of treatments by healers from the surrounding Druze villages, and the Rouge restaurant, which takes advantage of the local farms and their produce to provide a classy and delicious array of meals, including a modest but mouthwatering breakfast.

While it is the attention to such detail that has made Pereh now one of Israel’s most sought-after resorts – it was recently featured in the premier travel magazine Conde Nast, which touted the Galilee as one of the best destinations for 2023 – for many the resort’s intrigue is its wildly beautiful and remote location.

“In a country so condensed like Israel, there is a sense of space here,” said Eldar. “This is a place where you can really breathe.”

The writer was a guest of the Pereh Mountain Resort.

Israel has no diplomatic ties with Qatar, and its national soccer team didn’t qualify for the 2022 World Cup. That won’t stop thousands of Israel fans from pouring into the oil-rich Gulf state this week to join the frenzied crowds at the most-watched sporting event on earth.

It wasn’t until 10 days before the opening match between Qatar and Ecuador, set for Nov. 20, that world soccer’s ruling body, known as FIFA, worked out a plan for direct flights between Israel and Qatar that satisfied political and security leaders in both countries. By then, most Israelis with tickets to the nearly monthlong tournament had booked flights with layovers in third countries.

While Israelis are barred by statute from entry into Qatar, the country agreed to honor Israeli passports as a condition for the highly sought rights to host the World Cup. Still, many Israelis, generally known for their boisterous character, say they’ll try to keep things low-key at the games.

“The vibe is to go and enjoy the football and not try to stand out or anything,” Elon Grubman, a 32-year-old Israeli born in Brazil, told The Circuit.

When FIFA finally announced the agreement for direct charter flights on Nov. 10, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid hailed the move as “great news for football fans and for all Israelis,” adding that it was the result of “hard work over the course of many months.” Israel will also be allowed to open a temporary consular office to assist fans with lost passports and medical emergencies.

In expressing his “delight” at solving the visa problem, FIFA President Gianni Infantino also announced that the deal meant “Israelis and Palestinians will be able to fly together and enjoy football together.” Given the tight security protocols that Israel has practiced for decades in restricting Palestinian travelers through Ben Gurion International Airport, it’s unclear whether such joint flights will materialize. Like the Israelis, though, most Palestinians didn’t wait to book their flights.

Walid Jouda, a resident of the Gaza Strip, was standing in line yesterday afternoon at the heavily guarded southern border of the coastal enclave, waiting for permission to enter Egypt and fly to Doha through Cairo.

“I’m a football addict so seeing the matches live in Qatar is going to be amazing,” said Jouda, 35, an information technology administrator for a United Nations agency in Gaza City,  who is rooting for Argentina. “Maybe one day Palestine will qualify for the World Cup, but that’s still a dream.”

Though Israel and Qatar have never established full diplomatic ties, they have worked together publicly for more than two decades. In the late 1990s, Israel operated a trade liaison office in Doha until tensions between Israelis and Palestinians led Qatar to shut it down. Israel allows Qatari officials to travel through its territory and enter the Gaza Strip, where they have for years mediated between Israel and Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs the territory.

Tickets to the matches and accommodation in Qatar or neighboring countries don’t come cheap. Matan Peled, a manager at Israel’s ISSTA travel agency, said three-night packages that include two soccer matches were selling for $2,000 to $3,500 a person, depending on the hotel. One advantage to Qatar’s small size, he said, is the close proximity of all the new stadiums that were built for the World Cup.

“It’s like having eight stadiums in Tel Aviv,” Peled told The Circuit. “All the teams are in the same area, all the fan zones are close to one another.”

With no Israeli team in the tournament, 42-year-old Ronen Rotem said he doesn’t care much who wins. “I’ve never been to a football match in my life,” he said. “I’m only going because it’s a unique opportunity to visit Qatar.”

From lab-cultured milk to hydrogen-based energy generation, Israelis sought to share expertise in desert agriculture, desalination and food security with new Arab partners at the United Nations climate change summit and establish alliances across the Middle East and North Africa.

The campaign was led by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who said cooperation would lead to “regional climate resilience,” in a Nov. 7 address to the COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. A nonprofit industry group, Start-Up Nation Central, sought to foster connections with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and other countries that have signed peace agreements or normalized relations with Israel through an initiative it dubbed the MENA Alliance for Climate Innovation.

“We want to create a business-focused framework with partners from the region to connect startups with investors and corporations, and to work together to develop solutions addressing shared climate challenges,” Yariv Becher, Start-Up Nation Central’s vice president for innovation diplomacy, told The Circuit from Sharm el-Sheikh. “We came to COP27 to move things forward.”

Israel, which has the third-largest number of startups per capita in the world, has developed an international reputation for the quality of its research in desalination and desert agriculture. That has created natural linkages with its new allies in the world’s driest region, which extends from the Arabian desert to the Sahara. Israeli companies have developed partnerships in the UAE and Bahrain that enable them to do business in Saudi Arabia and other countries that don’t have formal diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.

Warning that the region is “on the brink of catastrophe,” Herzog laid out a framework for regional cooperation in addressing climate challenges.

“Here in Sharm el-Sheikh, I wish to reiterate the State of Israel’s solid commitments to achieving net zero carbon emissions and to transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy by 2050,” the president said. “But Israel is prepared to assume far greater responsibility,” he added. “Israel is prepared to lead the effort towards regional climate resilience – I intend to spearhead the development of what I term a Renewable Middle East, a regional ecosystem of sustainable peace.”

In the Israeli pavilion at the conference, 10 startups promoted their technologies: Aleph Farms, which produces meat from animal cells; Beewise, which develops robot-controlled beehives; GenCell, which generates energy from hydrogen and ammonia; Groundwork BioAg, which produces inoculants for commercial agriculture; H2Pro, which produces hydrogen-based energy; Home BioGas, which reduces cooking gas from household waste; Remilk, which produces laboratory-cultured milk; Tomorrow.io, which develops weather forecasting technology; UBQ Materials, which turns household waste into a thermoplastic product; and Wiliot, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions from production lines.

Underlining the region’s concern about climate change, next year’s conference, COP28, will be held in the United Arab Emirates, whose president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, pledged the country’s dedication to renewable energy even as it stands as the world’s seventh-largest oil producer.

“Our world is facing complex challenges, most important of which is climate change, which now affects the world’s stability and security – including food security… We have only one planet, and with that in mind, it is imperative that we partner and work together in a spirit of determination and optimism to address this common challenge through climate action,” he said.

Also at the conference, cabinet ministers from Israel, Jordan and the UAE signed a memorandum of understanding that lays the groundwork for creating solar energy fields in Jordan. The three-way agreement will enable Jordan to sell solar power from the solar field built by an Emirati firm, while Israel will sell desalinated water to Jordan from a site that will be built on the Mediterranean coast. The MOU was signed on Nov. 8 by Esawi Freij, Israel’s outgoing minister for regional cooperation; Mohammad Al Najjar, Jordan’s minister of water and irrigation; and the UAE’s Climate Change and Environment Minister Mariam Al Mheiri.