The UAE Boycotts Israel
The parent company of a Dubai-based firm at the center of a political storm in the US over the purchase of American ports participates in the Arab boycott against Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The firm, Dubai Ports World, is seeking control over six major US ports, including those in New York, Miami, Philadelphia and Baltimore. It is entirely owned by the Government of Dubai via a holding company called the Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation (PCZC), which consists of the Dubai Port Authority, the Dubai Customs Department and the Jebel Ali Free Zone Area.
“Yes, of course the boycott is still in place and is still enforced,” Muhammad Rashid a-Din, a staff member of the Dubai Customs Department’s Office for the Boycott of Israel, told the Post in a telephone interview.
“If a product contained even some components that were made in Israel, and you wanted to import it to Dubai, it would be a problem,” he said.
The fact that the UAE boycotts products from Israel is troubling, but hardly the deal-breaker some are making it out to be. Lots of countries place trade embargos on other countries for all sorts of reasons. America, for instance, does not trade with Cuba.
I disagree with the UAE’s decision to boycott Israel. I think it is a foolish decision based more on race hatred than anything else, but whatever. The UAE is a sovereign nation capable of making its own decisions. They are still, despite all their flaws, one of the most moderate Muslim nations in the middle-east. They are head and shoulders above many of the other countries we deal with in the region in terms of cooperation with U.S. foreign policy and dedication to human rights. They aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but isn’t it fair to say that the longer they cooperate with America and tie their own interests to ours the more likely it will become that their society will begin to look more and more like our own?
It won’t happen overnight, but they’ve already come a long way since 9/11. I think they should be encouraged further, rather than discouraged, by our cooperation on this ports deal. If we work with the long enough we may even give ourselves to leverage to begin pressuring the country into beginning normal diplomatic relations with Israel.
