“We call it The Socket in your Pockett^TM,” said Robert Lifton with a smile, holding up a small plastic box only a little bulkier than a cigarette pack. Mr. Lifton is the boundlessly energetic Chairman and CEO of Medis Technologies Ltd., and the small box is the Power Pack, a fuel cell for portable electronic devices developed by his company, and a dream come true for today’s technology-dependent consumer. When the Power Pack hits the stores, it will keep devices ranging from cell phones and PDAs to digital cameras and games running, even as it recharges their batteries. And it will do it quickly and cheaply, says Mr. Lifton.

Fuel cell technology has been around for a long time, but it never took off because it’s difficult to commercialize. But Medis Technologies has been pushing the envelope.

Medis was launched in 1992 in Israel based on a diagnostic cell scan technology that held out the prospect of detecting breast cancer with a simple blood test. Mr. Lifton, who was born in Brooklyn and went to Yale Law School, was interested because his family had had first-hand experience with breast cancer. He partnered with Israel Aircraft Industries, Ltd., which had licensed the technology from Bar Ilan University, where it was invented.

The company is closely held: some two thirds of the stock is owned by Israel Aircraft Industries, the families of Mr. Lifton and his partner, Howard Weingrow – who is also the President of Medis – and the Crown family of Chicago who own Rockefeller Center and have significant holdings in General Dynamics.

Cell scan technology is now coming into its own and may soon help cancer patients by determining in advance if a particular kind of drug will work for them. But it was off to a slow start in the nineties, and Mr. Lifton needed another way to create value. The Soviet Jewish migration into Israel in the mid-nineties made available a large pool of scientists, and Medis looked for talent among the Russian emigres.

In 1998, it acquired the small company More Energy Ltd. headed by Gennadi Finkelshtain. “A brilliant scientist,” says Mr. Lifton, “I hope he’ll be recognized with the Nobel Prize for his work in fuel cells.” In fuel cells, Medis had found its new focus.

The main market for the Power Pack fuel cell would be wireless carriers like Sprint, Verizon and Cingular, eager to increase their ARPU (average revenue per unit). Having spent a lot of money on acquiring new subscribers and advertising; they want their clients to use the phone as much as possible once on board. “We are bringing to them a product that will not only help drive more data through the system, but has enormous profit implications for them if they sell it to their subscriber base,” Mr. Lifton says. Carriers would benefit from extended phone use, and could offer their customers fresh fuel cells at regular intervals, billed directly to their account.

Wireless carriers are not immune to the lure of a reliable profit stream based on the periodic sale of a disposable product. But they would need large numbers of such a product, which means that the issue for Medis now is production capacity. “Our target is to have thousands of units made starting at the end of the year,” says Mr. Lifton, “but to have at least one [production] line in place, hopefully in the middle of next year, that runs off 1 to 1.5 million units a year.” Manufacture and assembly will take place in locations all over the world.

Medis is working with General Dynamics to develop portable fuel cells for the defense industry. One example is an advanced PDA. “It is so advanced, its own battery can’t run it,” says Mr. Lifton. The current version involves cumbersome and expensive lithium-manganese oxide batteries, but Medis has developed a power pack that will run with disposable cartridges half the weight of the batteries and longer-lasting. Prototypes are already being tested.

“I see the military as a market,” says Mr. Lifton, “much smaller than the civilian market, but one that gives us the opportunity to design products for the commercial market that go beyond the normal spec testing.”

From 1988 to 1994, Mr. Lifton served as President of the American Jewish Congress. He has always maintained strong ties with Israel, but also with the Arab world. He sees commercial activity as a bridge between Arabs and Israelis, and Medis Technologies has a number of prominent Arab investors. “We were the first Jewish organization to be invited by King Fahd to Saudi Arabia,” he says. Access to Arab leaders, including Presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Hafez al Assad of Syria, allowed his organization to press both Arab and Israeli leaders to deal constructively with the Middle East conflict.

In 1992, Mr.Lifton founded the Israel Policy Forum at the request of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin. With Henry Siegman, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on the Middle East peace process, he established the U.S.-Middle East Project, which he has co-chaired with, among others, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia and General Brent Scowcroft.

At the 2003 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Medis Technologies was chosen as one of 30 Technology Pioneers of 2004. “We’re not going to Davos this year,” says Mr. Lifton, “I’ll be in London for our Board meeting.” He’s talking about the Board meeting of the U.S.-Middle East Project and adds that, if all goes well, he expects to host Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel, Javier Solana – the former head of Nato – and Gen. Brent Scowcroft, as well as Mahmoud Abbas, the newly elected Palestinian Authority President.

“I feel very strongly that the view of Israel in this country and elsewhere in the world is always in the context of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, not in the context of Israel’s huge contribution of technology and talent to the world,” says Mr. Lifton. He sees the new technologies his company is developing as a response to “Tikun Olam,” the Hebrew injunction that means, “Healing the World.”

Mr. Lifton expects that fuel cell technology will generate significant profits for Medis, and that the company will soon be able to afford to invest in other currently underfunded technologies. Medis holds patents on new technologies for fuel-efficient engines, environmentally friendly refrigeration and cooling systems.