Journey to peace:
Bruce (Baruch) Gurfein and Joe Cohen, two senior Jewish managers of the Sekyk capital funds from Dubai, today (Sunday) completed the first part of the extraordinary journey they embarked on: the first journey by car from the United Arab Emirates to Israel and back, on the occasion of two years since the Abraham Accords.
On the way, which is about 9,000 kilometers long in both directions, the two crossed huge dunes in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, dealing with extreme weather conditions - all to raise awareness of investments and regional cooperation in water technologies and desert agriculture.
"I have been living and working in Dubai since 1997," said Gurfein in a conversation with Israel Hayom.
The 'Connect' investment fund that I manage, which is a branch of the 'Al-Navoda' group, has been investing in Israel for many years - long before the Abraham agreements.
In the last six months, we decided to establish an 'accelerator' that will help companies in the fields of desert agriculture and food and water technologies."
According to Gorfein, in recent years alone the fund has directly and indirectly invested about 500 million dollars in Israeli companies.
"Many of the wars in the world and in the region ultimately result from a lack of water and food, and our idea is to take companies from all the countries of the region and establish a platform for them that will allow them to cooperate with a relatively small investment, and to carry out a more significant recruitment after an initial demonstration of feasibility. We give companies land, water and labor in the country The destination - for example, in Saudi Arabia - to prove that their product really works.
An SUV, a change of clothes and a lot of junk food - and no Wiz
"In order to establish the project, which should eventually include between 25 and 30 companies, we had to visit many companies from the countries of the region that are candidates to join it, and then the idea of a horseback journey through the desert from the Emirates to Israel, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and the Palestinian Authority came up."
The two set off from Dubai in a Nissan Patrol Armada SUV, which has a 4.6-liter, eight-cylinder gasoline engine and an exceptional ability to pass.
Among other things, they equipped themselves with batteries and spare tires, a voltage converter, video and computer equipment, Go-Pro cameras, an outdoor refrigerator, a change of clothes and a lot of junk food.
Fuel supply was also a challenge, since in the Saudi desert you can cross hundreds of kilometers without a gas station.
However, Gurfein says that "the price of a liter of fuel in Saudi Arabia is about two shekels, which was a significant advantage.
"We traveled most of the way on wide roads in Saudi Arabia, with three or four lanes in each direction, but occasionally we had to go off-road and cross dunes and desert areas. Several times we encountered thunderstorms and sandstorms that started completely suddenly, causing the visibility to drop to almost zero and we couldn't even see A few meters ahead.
"Software such as Wiz, Google Maps and satellite navigation systems work less in Saudi Arabia because their maps are not updated, so we navigated using the traditional method - with a paper map, even though in many places in Saudi Arabia the signage is only in Arabic. We arrived in Israel exactly when the Abraham Accords were two years old," Gurfein says.
Presidential meeting
"Along the way, all the human encounters we participated in were joyful and welcoming," the two emphasize.
They will now stay in Israel for about ten days, where they will meet with President Herzog, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to Israel, and senior officials of the local food-tech and agro-tech industry, after which they will return to Dubai by car - on a slightly different route than the one they arrived on, which will also include a visit to Bahrain.
The two intend to make the current journey the first of similar journeys that will take place every year, with the aim of generating as many business collaborations as possible between high-tech companies from the countries of the region.
The journey, which is financed mainly from personal sources, was organized with the help of attorney Oded Sela, who previously also produced the journey of the late Roy Sadan, who circumnavigated the world by bicycle for about four years.
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