How SodaStream Makes—and Markets—Peace

In early December, scattered violence erupted in Israel after President Trump announced that he would recognize Jerusalem as the nation’s capital, abandoning the U.S.’s long-standing neutrality on the city’s status. It wasn’t the orgy of bloodshed between Jews and Palestinians that some had expected, at least not yet. But the hostilities bode poorly for what Trump has described, vaguely, as a coming “ultimate deal” for all of the actors in a conflict that has lasted more than a century. The prospect of peaceful coexistence in the region seems as bleak as ever.

Except perhaps in Rahat, a city of 62,000 in the rocky Negev desert. On a fall afternoon, Daniel Birnbaum steers a white Skoda sedan off the highway and up to a complex of four white buildings, one of which bears an enormous logo that reads “SodaStream.” In 2015, the $1.5 billion maker of home carbonation devices moved the bulk of its manufacturing here, to the country’s largest Bedouin city. Birnbaum, the chief executive officer, parks just as a work shift is ending and the 1,700-person campus is emptying out. But inside one of the cavernous buildings, two dozen or so employees remain on the assembly line, earning overtime.