Is Dubai helping ethnic cleansing in Palestine?
[ 20/04/2008 - 10:47 PM ]
From Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem
The government of Dubai recently allowed a major bankroller of Jewish
settlement expansion in the West Bank to open at least two Jewelry stores in
the Gulf emirate.
According to reliable sources in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai
is a key member-state, Israeli billionaire and diamond magnate Lev Leviev is
preparing to open two large jewelry stores in Dubai, a world's hub of Jewelry
trading.
The first store will be opened soon at the Burj Dubai Mall (Dubai Mall
Tower) while a second store is slated to be opened later this year in the new
Atlantis Hotel on the Jumeirah Palm Island.
Leviev has already opened one store in Dubai in March, 2008, in the
lobby of al-Qasr Hotel on Madinat Jumeirah.
The Dubai authorities were initially reluctant to grant the Israeli
billionaire a license to do business in the oil-rich emirate. However, Leviev
reportedly successfully lobbied "North American and European connections" to
convince Dubai officials to reconsider their objections.
Leviev's companies, including Africa-Israel and Leader Management &
Development as well as several other subsidiaries, have been quite active in
displacing Palestinian villagers from their homes and land in several parts of
the West Bank.
The two firms have built hundreds of settler units in at least five
Jewish settlements constructed on land illegally seized from its Arab
proprietors.
In recent years, a company called Danya Cebus, a subsidiary of Leviev's
Africa-Israel built the settlement of Zufim on private Arab land seized from
the village of Jayyous. The same company has built hundreds of settler units
on land stolen from the village of Bilin. Numerous additional settler units
were built in the two large settlements of Ma'ali Adomim, a few kilometers east
of Jerusalem, and Har Homa, near the predominantly Christian Arab town of Beit
Sahur.
Israel hopes that these settlements will cut off East Jerusalem from the
rest West Bank, thus making the Palestinian dream of making the city the future
capital of a prospective Palestinian state utterly unrealistic and outright
impossible.
In addition to his intensive involvement in Jewish settlement expansion,
including colonies defined by the inherently unjust Israeli justice system as
"manifestly illegal," Leviev has donated undisclosed but reportedly large sums
of money to the Land Redemption Fund, a land-grabbing organization affiliated
with Gush Emunim, the ideological group behind Jewish settlement activities in
the West Bank.
According to the Israeli newspaper, Yedeot Ahronot, the Land Redemption
Fund uses fraud and strong-arm tactics to seize land from Palestinians for
settlement expansion.
Last year the Israeli group, Peace Now, and other settlement-watch
groups, discovered that hundreds of settler units built in the settlement of
Matityahu in the Salfit region, in the central West Bank, were actually built
on private Palestinian land seized at gun point from its legal and rightful
Palestinian owners.
However, despite the discovery, the Israeli government refused to
dismantle the illegal settler units, with one Israeli official saying that
"this problem will be discussed with the Palestinian Authority in the context
of final-status talks."
Leviev's companies are actually destroying the lives of thousands of
Palestinians by narrowing their horizons and dispossessing them of their
livelihoods.
Abdullah Abu Rahma from the village of Bilin and Sharif Omar from Jayyous
told representative of the human rights group Adala (www.adalahny.org), which
monitors Israeli theft Palestinian land, that "Leviev's companies are
destroying the olive groves and farms that have sustained our villages for
centuries."
"We call on people of conscience all over the world to impose broad
boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those
applied against apartheid South Africa."
The mayor of Jayous, which suffered incalculable losses due to Leviev's
destructive rampage in the northern West Bank, told this reporter that "Leveiv
is indulging in ethnic cleansing against our community and our farmers."
"He is building settlements at our expense; he is destroying our land,
our farms, and our orchards, and at the same time he is opening business in
Dubai in order to finance his crimes against our people. Shame on Dubai and its
government."
Some Jewish organizations opposed to the Israeli policy of ethnic
cleansing and apartheid have also called on the countries of the world to
boycott Israeli businesses and firms involved in disposing Palestinians of
their land.
"We call on the government and people of the United Arab Emirates to join
the growing international campaign to boycott Lev Leviev's companies due to
their construction of Israeli colonial settlements," declared Daniel
Lang-Levitsky of Jews Against the Occupation-NYC.
"A major Israeli violator of Palestinian rights and international law
should not be opening jewelry stores in Dubai," said Issa Ayoub, a spokesperson
for the Adala group. Adala organized eight boycott protests outside Leviev's
new Madison Avenue Jewelry store in New York City over the last five months.
The Palestinian Authority has refused to comment on the Dubai government
decision to allow the settler bankroller Leviev's to open business ventures in
the oil-rich emirate.
One Palestinian official contacted by telephone said "I don't know
anything about this affair and I have not heard of Leviev."
A Hamas official in the Gaza Strip said "the Palestinian people were
feeling embittered and betrayed by this scandalous behavior on the part of the
Dubai government."
"We were hoping that Dubai would stand with us against the genocidal
Israeli regime and its unrelenting efforts to ethnically cleanse our people
from their ancestral homeland. We had never imagined that a day would come when
we had to appeal to an Arab country to refrain from harming us and undermining
our cause."
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