TEL AVIV, Israel – PureHealth, the largest healthcare company in the United Arab Emirates, and Israel’s Sheba Medical Center signed an agreement last week to conduct joint research, collaborate on staff training and combine efforts to promote medical tourism.

The two institutions approved a memorandum of understanding outlining their intention to work together across a range of medical fields. Israel’s ambassador to the UAE, Amir Hayek, told The Circuit that the preliminary agreement demonstrates a growing momentum for the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between the two countries in 2020.

“We are talking to each other about everything,” Hayek said in an interview from Abu Dhabi. “We are open about everything and we are past the point of no return.”

The agreement follows a visit to Sheba, near Tel Aviv, and other Israeli health facilities last week by top executives and doctors from the Emirati organization, Hayek said. PureHealth is a $5 billion subsidiary of Abu Dhabi’s ADQ sovereign wealth fund that was formed last year to consolidate the UAE’s major health institutions, including Abu Dhabi Health Services Co., The National Health Insurance Co., Tamouh Healthcare and the Abu Dhabi Stem Cell Center. PureHealth operates 25 hospitals and 100 clinics across the Gulf state.

“This collaboration marks a major milestone in our efforts to drive healthcare innovation and improve patient outcomes,” Rashid Al Qubaisi, PureHealth’s group chief corporate officer, said in a statement. “By combining our expertise and resources, we aim to foster breakthrough research, advance medical education, and establish a robust framework for clinical services coordination.”

Since the signing of the U.S.-backed Accords at the White House in September 2020, trade between the UAE and Israel has exceeded $3.8 billion and the two countries expect commercial activity to reach $10 billion by the end of 2026. ADQ reached an agreement in December to buy control of Phoenix Holdings, Israel’s biggest insurer, for about $675 million. The deal is under regulatory review in Israel.

In another agreement last week, Abu Dhabi’s G42 technology company and Israel’s Viola Ventures investment firm launched a joint business aimed at providing computer engineers and other skilled employees to businesses in both countries and around the world.

Sheba, Israel’s largest hospital, is already working with Bahrain’s King Hamad American Mission Hospital, sharing advanced medical capabilities that are based on artificial intelligence, virtual reality and digital health care management. The UAE agreement “is of the utmost importance in creating a strategy whereby we will work to share our knowledge in the areas of research, clinical trials, and medical training,” said Yoel Har-Even, director of Sheba’s international division.

The UAE’s ambassador to Israel, Mohamed Al Khaja, who was present at the signing of the agreement, said it expressed the need to “find and focus on the real benefits of peace, which improve people’s health, lives and standards of living.”

Recognizing that memorandums of understanding don’t always get implemented, Hayek said the two governments are determined to help Sheba and PureHealth develop their collaboration.

“This MOU needs to be turned into a business plan,” Hayek said. “We will do everything needed to help them, but I think that from this stage… they need to cooperate between themselves and take it forward. We will follow up just to make sure that it happened.”

Sheba held a 75th anniversary fundraising dinner this month at which Mohamed Alabbar, founder of Dubai-based Emaar Properties and builder of the Burj Khalifa tower, the world’s tallest, addressed the crowd about the value of medical cooperation in advancing peace.

TEL AVIV – A government-owned technology company in the United Arab Emirates and Israel’s largest private investor in tech firms launched Thursday a joint venture aimed at providing computer engineers and other skilled employees to businesses around the world.

The new company, Global Valley, will be based in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, and address an international shortage of programming talent. It’s the product of collaboration between Abu Dhabi’s G42, which has interests ranging from biotechnology to artificial intelligence, the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) and Israel’s Viola Ventures, which has $5 billion in assets under management, they said in a statement.

Global Valley is also a banner project for the Abraham Accords, which normalized ties between the UAE and Israel in September 2020 and has generated $3.8 billion of trade volume between the two countries. G42 is controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE’s national security adviser and younger brother of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed, ruler of Abu Dhabi.

The new company will strengthen Abu Dhabi as a “dynamic hub for technological advancement and business prowess,” G42 Group Chief Executive Peng Xiao said in a statement on Thursday. Avi Zeevi, a co-founder and general partner of Viola, said Global Valley “will provide tech companies, in Israel and globally, with the best-of-class tech talent to fuel their future growth and support their activities in the region.”

While the ongoing global economic slowdown has led to layoffs that increased the supply of tech workers, the industry expects the employee shortage to grow. A study by the consulting firm Korn Ferry predicts a global talent gap by 2030 of some 85 million employees in the telecommunications, media and technology sector.

Since the normalization agreements, ADIO has also collaborated with OurCrowd, a Jerusalem-based venture capital that established an AI development center in Abu Dhabi, and Liquidity Group, a Tel Aviv-based lender specializing in fintech companies that opened an R&D center in the UAE capital. In December, Abu Dhabi’s ADQ investment firm agreed to buy control of Phoenix Holdings, Israel’s biggest insurer, for about $675 million. The deal is under regulatory review in Israel.

Global Valley “builds on the enthusiasm generated by the Abraham Accords, which continues to create important collaborations in sectors focused on innovation and advanced technology,” said ADIO Director General Abdulla Abdul Aziz AlShamsi.

Since Mobileye Global, the Israeli developer of self-driving car technology, sold shares last year in an IPO, its stock price has doubled. Now Intel Corp. is planning a secondary offering to carve some profit from the pioneering automotive startup it bought six years ago for more than $15 billion.

Intel, one of the largest computer chipmakers, will sell 35 million shares in its Jerusalem-based subsidiary, a stake worth about $1.5 billion, with an option to sell another 5.25 million shares, Mobileye said in a June 5 filing with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are managing the sale, which will leave Intel solidly in control with more than 88% of the shares.

Mobileye is a world leader in creating software, semiconductor chips, cameras and sensory arrays to enable the development of self-driving vehicles. BMW, Volkswagen and Nissan are among its clients. Senior auto executives regularly make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to meet with Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua.

The company raised some $860 million in its IPO at the end of October, giving it a market value of about $21 billion after the first day of trading. That was well short of the $50 billion Intel had earlier expected as it was making preparations for the initial offering. Since then the stock price has nearly doubled from $21 a share to $41.77 at the end of last week as its market cap surged to $34 billion. The sale will give Intel cash at a time that it has announced plans to invest in artificial intelligence, vying with upstart competitors such as Nvidia.

Mobileye shares are likely to reach $50 a share over the 12 months, according to Canaccord Genuity, a Toronto-based investment bank, which initiated coverage of the company last week with a “buy” rating. In an analyst note, Canaccord described autonomous driving as  “one of the highest value-creating technologies to be deployed. Ever.”

Noting Mobileye’s “impressive growth indicators and long-term potential within its category,” the investment bank said the company has a “dominant” 70% share in the advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) market, adding that “its advantageous position in the emerging full self-driving market further strengthens its prospects.”

In a two-day dash through the Middle East, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman invited audiences in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan and Israel to explore the benefits of artificial intelligence and help guard against the “existential risk” it presents.

“I am hopeful that the region can play a central role in this global conversation,” Altman said on Tuesday in the UAE’s capital of Abu Dhabi. On Wednesday, he traveled to India and wrapped up the week in South Korea.

At all his Mideast stops, Altman radiated enthusiasm for both OpenAI’s groundbreaking ChatGPT product and the technology’s expanding abilities in language, business tasks, science and software development. As he did testifying in Congress last month and meeting with European leaders last week, Altman cautioned about the disruptions AI is expected to cause, such as broad job losses in fields where humans can be replaced by machines.

“We face serious risk. We face existential risk,” Altman said during a question-and-answer session at Hub 71, an Abu Dhabi business park teeming with software startups. “The challenge that the world has is how we’re going to manage those risks and make sure we still get to enjoy those tremendous benefits. No one wants to destroy the world.”

After touring Europe last week, Altman, 38, skipped through the Middle East at a pace of two countries a day. He spoke to Israeli audiences on Monday morning in Tel Aviv and then to Jordanians in Amman in the late afternoon. On Tuesday, he appeared for a morning seminar in Doha, Qatar, and caught a short flight to the UAE for the afternoon session.

Altman, whose appearance was also webcast, praised the UAE’s early embrace of AI, noting the high level of investment in the technology by both government and private interests.

“I think there’s been discussion about AI… in Abu Dhabi in particular, before it was cool,” he said. “You know, now, like everybody’s on the AI bandwagon, which we’re excited about, but we have… special appreciation for the people that were… talking about this when everyone thought AI was not going to happen.”

In Israel on Monday, Altman met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, visited the  R&D center of Microsoft Corp. and appeared onstage in a packed auditorium at Tel Aviv University.

“The rate at which the tech and startup community in Israel is embracing AI is incredible to watch,” Altman said in a meeting with  Herzog. “I am sure Israel will play a huge role.”

While Altman didn’t meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the two spoke by phone. Netanyahu later tweeted that he plans to “convene policy teams to discuss a national artificial intelligence policy in both the civilian and the security spheres.” He said he consulted with both Altman and billionaire Elon Musk, who was one of the original investors in OpenAI.

At Tel Aviv University, Altman and Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientist, spoke to an audience of 1,200 students, researchers, business executives and investors. Among them were Gil Schwed, CEO and co-founder of Check Point Software Technologies; Chemi Peres, managing partner and co-founder of the Pitango venture capital firm; and Adi Soffer-Teeni, general manager in Israel of Meta, the owner of Facebook.

Having changed from the dark suit he wore to the meeting with Herzog, Altman showed up on campus dressed more casually — like a software executive — in a gray, long-sleeved T-shirt with white trousers. He told the crowd he was impressed with Israel’s “talent density” and the “relentlessness, drive, ambition level of Israeli entrepreneurs.” 

Altman said the excitement generated by AI means now is a great time to create a startup.

“You have an incredible new, fast-moving technological wave, and [that] is when startups win… when the incumbents screw up and get displaced. The ground is shaking right now, that is what you want as a startup… The opportunity to build value with a new approach doesn’t come along very often. And this is the big one, so every entrepreneur is a summer child right now. And it is a super cool time.”

AI technology, he said, “is unstoppable,” and the world just needs to “figure out how to manage the risk.” 

In Amman, Jordan, Altman made similar remarks to a crowd of about 500 at Al-Hussein Technical University. Fouad Jeryes, co-founder of the Jordanian cloud communications firm Maqsam and host of the event, told the audience that tickets were sold out “100 seconds” after they were put online.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli technology companies, the country’s economic engine and branding platform for three decades, are scraping for cash and trying to protect what they’ve raised by moving funds abroad.

While the government has temporarily paused its proposed judicial overhaul that led to a downgrade by Moody’s Investors Service of Israel’s economic outlook, startup founders are making contingency plans that include transferring key employee teams to other countries and shifting money from domestic accounts.

The concerns were reflected in a survey published this month by a nonprofit organization that has spent years cheerleading for Israel’s tech industry and promoting its potential value to new markets such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. Banking data from the first quarter of 2023 showed a 71% decline in startup investment from the same period last year.

“To move your capital outside Israel takes a phone call,” Avi Hasson, CEO of Start-Up Nation Central, which commissioned the survey, told The Circuit. “But if you’re moving projects or people outside of Israel, that’s a whole different ball game, both in the investment and effort needed to do it as well as the investment and effort needed to bring it back.”

The fact that some 90% of investment in Israeli tech startups comes from foreign sources indicates the pressure under which the company executives operate, said Hasson, formerly Israel’s chief scientist at the Ministry of Economy.

“The foreign capital is neither Zionist nor anti-Zionist,” he said. “It came to Israel based on the unique ideas, talent and ecosystem that are here and it will equally move out if it doesn’t feel that it has the conditions to generate exceptional returns.”

In its April 15 statement, Moody’s said downgrading the credit outlook “reflects a deterioration of Israel’s governance” under the coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that won election in November. “While mass protests have led the government to pause the legislation and seek dialogue with the opposition, the manner in which the government has attempted to implement a wide-ranging reform without seeking broad consensus points to a weakening of institutional strength and policy predictability,” Moody’s said.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, has sought to provide assurances that his government won’t harm the investment climate, pointing to his record as an economic reformer whose policies played a large role in building Israel’s reputation as a technology powerhouse. He minimizes the impact on the economy of the mass street protests against his proposed changes to the court system.

“Look, here’s what I think,” Netanyahu said in an April 19 interview with CNBC. “I think the future… belongs to those who innovate. I think the momentary fluff, the momentary dust that is in the air is just that — dust. The fundamentals of the Israeli economy are very powerful.”

Based on 1,142 responses from companies, investment firms and multinational corporations, the survey, published on April 13, demonstrated how operating abroad is increasingly seen as an option. It was conducted in the last week of March before Moody’s changed its outlook from “positive” to “stable” and warned that its credit rating may be cut if government policy becomes more unpredictable.

Among the findings, 46% of companies that responded are planning to move cash reserves outside of Israel, and 58% of those plan to transfer more than 50% of their money. About a quarter of the companies are considering plans to relocate employees out of Israel, and 42% are looking into changing their registration to another country.

Regarding current sentiment, 84% of investors and 80% of startups said they believe the judicial changes will have a negative effect on them and their portfolio companies. Similarly, 84% of investors expect the changes to have a negative effect on the ability of companies to raise capital from abroad, and  77% of companies believe it will be difficult to raise capital from foreign investors. Some  65% of the multinational companies polled expect a negative impact on their interest in piloting, buying or commercializing Israeli technology products.

Hasson expressed satisfaction with the pause in government efforts to push its judicial plan through the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and said he hopes negotiations underway with opposition leaders will lead to a compromise that doesn’t deter investment.

“People are still developing products and selling them and so on,” he said. “I think the recovery capabilities of the ecosystem are really, really strong.”

What can the Abraham Accords countries learn from an impact investor who is focused on electrifying sub-Saharan Africa?

Angela Homsi said she found herself answering that question from a number of people whom she met at last week’s N7 Conference on Agriculture, Water and Food Security in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Beirut-born Homsi co-founded the renewable energy company Ignite Power as a vehicle for supplying remote villages across the world’s least-connected continent with the tools and infrastructure they need to prosper in the modern world. Teaming up over the past seven years with organizations such as the World Bank, UK Aid Direct, Power Africa and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Homsi has focused on bringing electricity, fresh water and internet access to some of the poorest countries on earth.

Homsi’s company, which has its main offices in the United Arab Emirates and Israel, was one of the Middle Eastern businesses featured at last week’s N7 Conference, a project of the Atlantic Council and Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation aimed at showing tangible benefits from the normalization of ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

“I grew up in these places,” Homsi told The Circuit. “From the start of my career, I’ve wanted to find solutions that would help with the situation in our region.” The one-time Goldman Sachs trader was born to Jewish and Christian parents in the midst of the long-running Lebanese civil war.  

“Our relationship together is not about a few more billions of dollars of bilateral trade, it’s about what our partnership could mean for us in unlocking massive problems that are really global problems,” she said in a Zoom interview from Abu Dhabi.

Ignite’s successes with solar power projects in Rwanda and Mozambique offered lessons in developing processes and smart operations that Homsi hopes can be applied in tandem with the N7 Initiative, which is focused less on senior government officials and more on experts and program-level executives.

“When the water scientists, the ag-tech entrepreneurs and the climate experts pool their knowledge and resources, they can apply solutions to the issues that present challenges, but also opportunities that are common to all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa region,” said the N7’s Initiative director, Daniel Shapiro, who was U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, from 2011 to 2017.

Homsi said that what she saw at the N7 conference was similar to what Ignite has found critical to its successes in Africa. “We’re bringing to the table each of our separate distinct core competencies… in order to potentially solve problems that are way bigger than just one country.”

The N7 Initiative is working to expand normalization between Israel and Arab and Muslim countries. In October 2021, it convened the first-ever gathering of ministers and other senior officials from Israel, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Bahrain and the UAE. This time four other nations participated that do not have ties with Israel, but preferred not to be identified.

The conference brought together more than 100 politicians, academics and NGO executives in what organizers of the N7 Initiative hoped would be a successful follow-up from January’s Negev Forum working group meetings and the N7’s December conference on education and coexistence.

“At a time when political dynamics are injecting a degree of instability into new regional relationships, participants from 11 different nations convened together to discuss tangible initiatives relating to water, food security and agriculture technologies,” Shalom Lipner, a Jerusalem-based, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council who worked on the conference in Abu Dhabi, told The Circuit. “Their enthusiasm to propose actual deliverables, real projects that aim to improve quality of life for all peoples of the region, was inspiring and holds the promise for a better future in a beleaguered part of the world.”

The three-day program featured opening keynote remarks from Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s national security advisor, and Nawal Al-Hosany, the UAE’s permanent representative to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Hanegbi expressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to expand the number of countries joining the Abraham Accords.

Meanwhile, the second day’s lunch crowd heard via video link from former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is now executive chairman of the eponymous London-based Institute for Global Change. Following Blair was U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who is co-chair of the Abraham Accords Caucus. Booker was one of a handful of U.S. congressional leaders who had a presence at the event. 

And Homsi said there was a real resonance between the approach that Ignite brings to its projects and remarks to the conference from Ambassador Cindy McCain, permanent representative of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome.

“Producing more with less is crucial to building resilient food systems and requires a united global effort,’ McCain said in taped remarks. McCain is due to become executive director of the UN World Food Program next month.

Israeli Ambassador to the UAE Amir Hayek attended the conference and opened his remarks with a tribute to Emirati President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed for initiating normalization with Israel under the Abraham Accords. He expressed the hope that the Israeli-Arab agreements would lead to “a new Middle East, a new region [and] new relationships for the benefit of the future of the next generation.”

The N7 initiative held a previous conference in December on education and coexistence and its organizers said there will be more. “We look forward to continuing our support for the governments working to advance regional integration at our upcoming conference,” Oren Eisner, president of the Talpins Foundation, told participants in the closing session.

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).