By Sibel Utku Bila - Agence France-Presse

ANKARA - Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is set to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories to sign agreements aimed at revitalizing a Palestinian industrial zone on the Gaza Strip under the leadership of Turkish businessmen, officials said in Ankara yesterday.

Gul is due to sign deals with Palestinian officials today and Israeli counterparts tomorrow.

The minister said the project sought to alleviate the economic hardships of the Palestinians in the densely populated and impoverished Gaza Strip.

“Those people need to work. I guess that jobs will be created for some 10,000 Palestinians,” Gul told the CNN Turk news channel.

“The realization of this project is really very important.” The project, spearheaded by the Turkey’s Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB), would revive, develop and expand the Erez industrial zone, located near the main civilian crossing between Gaza and Israel, despite the violence that has wracked the territory.

A Turkish diplomat hailed the project as a concrete result of Turkey’s efforts to bring the Israelis and Palestinians closer.

“There is no other international initiative at the moment on which both the Israelis and the Palestinians agree,” he said. “It is very important for us that we have been instrumental in achieving that.” Turkey, a strictly secular non-Arab Muslim nation, is Israel’s main regional ally and also has close ties with the Palestinians.

The Erez industrial zone was once held up as a model of cooperation, with Israeli businesses hiring thousands of Palestinian workers at its peak.

However, the area has been closed for the last 18 months following a number of attacks by Palestinian militants and it lies next to an area that has recently been decreed a “no-go zone” by the Israeli army in a bid to halt rocket attacks.

Under the project, the zone will be managed by TOBB and Turkish companies would be encouraged to invest in the area, and goods would be able to enter the European Union, United States and the Gulf states duty-free, TOBB executive Mustafa Bayburtlu told AFP.

“The zone will be open to investors from all countries, including Israel, of course,” he said. “We aim to create employment for at least 5,000 people.” The Israeli side has lent support to the project and goods manufactured in the zone would be exported via the Israeli port of Ashdod, Bayburtlu explained.

Talks are under way with a private Turkish security firm on a contract for providing security in the area, he said.

The cost of the project is estimated at about 50 million dollars (42 million euros), including infrastructure construction and the building of administrative and social facilities, said Guven Sak, the head of a think tank that supports the initiative, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Construction is scheduled to start in late March and the first Turkish enterprise is expected to start working in the area in July, Sak said, adding that the project would become fully operational at the end of the year.

The project is part of a TOBB initiative called “Industry for Peace,” under which Turkish business people have already held a series of meetings with Palestinian and Israeli counterparts in order to boost cooperation.