MADE-in-Palestine high heels could become a vital step forward in the Middle East peace process, according to President Shimon Peres of Israel.

Last week Peres put the finishing touches to an unprecedented agreement with the Turkish and Palestinian presidents that will see the creation of an industrial park in the occupied West Bank funded by Turkish businessmen.

“I call it the privatisation of peace,” said Peres, 84, who won a Nobel peace prize for his role in starting negotiations with the Palestinians 13 years ago.

Nurturing a park that will employ thousands of Palestinians in making shoes, clothes and furniture is one way to resuscitate the Oslo Accords, the breakthrough agreement signed between the Israelis and Palestinians in 1993.

The accords won him the Nobel peace prize a year later, which he shared with the late Yitzhak Rabin, then Israeli prime minister, and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader.

The idea for an industrial park emerged from Peres’s frustration at the collapse of talks after Palestinian elections in 2006 were won by Hamas, the fundamentalist Islamic party, which refuses to recognise Israel’s existence. With the political path blocked, Peres turned to the economic route and engaged the Turks.

He believes that the industrial park, by providing a better livelihood for Palestinians in the West Bank, will undermine Hamas and strengthen Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president who has been at odds with Hamas since it seized Gaza in a bloody coup in June.

“If people see that in the peaceful West Bank there is stability and the standard of living is going up, it will make them question Hamas,” Peres said.

“They will see that all Hamas is giving them is shooting and making things horrible.”

The new project comes on the eve of a Middle East peace conference called by the American government in Annapolis, Maryland, for later this month.

Peres has no illusions that the meeting will produce any solid conclusions. “Annapolis is an opening platform,” he said.

He clearly feels the pressure of history. “If the peace process is not renewed it will pass away,” he said. “The success of Annapolis will be that, the day after, there is the start of serious negotiations.”

The new factories will make a significant contribution, he believes. “Fifteen thousand jobs are worth 150,000 rifles,” he explained.

“Economic opportunity plays a greater role than any tank. Google doesn’t have an army.”

If all goes well, ground will be broken within the next few months on the 500-acre park 12 miles southwest of Hebron.

Guven Sak, an economist who is behind the project, said Turkish business became involved to help resolve the conflict in Palestine.

“We quickly realised that as private people we couldn’t possibly solve the Palestinian-Israeli issue, but as businessmen who deal with the tangible we might provide a concrete project,” Sak said.

“It’s one small step, but sometimes you walk with small steps.” The park will house 50 medium-sized Turkish companies, each employing about 200 Palestinian workers.

For all its idealistic intentions, the venture has gone ahead only because Turkish businessmen saw they could turn a profit. A study of local labour skills found they matched the requirements for textile, leather and furniture manufacture.

It helped that wages in Palestine are half those in Turkey, and goods entering America from Israel are untaxed.

“It’s not only going to be profitable; we’re taking a concrete step to doing exactly what we set out to do: find a solution to the Palestinian and Israeli issue,” said Sak.

The visionary Peres could do worse than to invite Sak and his colleagues to Annapolis.

Times Recommends

• Fish and chip shops ‘selling cobbler as cod’
• T in the Park festival at Kinross
• Body Watch