UAE cements its economic ties with Israeli Apartheid

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The United Arab Emirates has completed negotiations on a bilateral comprehensive free trade agreement with "Israel". On April 1, 2022, the Emirati trade minister sat down in a hotel in occupied Al-Quds to sign off on the first full trade agreement with any Arab country. The negotiations themselves were apparently fast-tracked, and will further accelerate the reported $900 million trade between the two countries in 2021. The UAE is reportedly the second-largest economy in the Arab world and this new deal will cover 95% of “food products, agriculture, cosmetics, medical equipment, drugs and more” of goods currently traded with "Israel".

The agreement, coming on the heels of the so-called “Negev Summit” (Summit of Shame) held last week, shows the expanding parameters of the economic and political cooperation between the Arab despot regimes and the Zionist state. 

So free trade now with the Emirates for illegal Israeli settlement wine and food products? While activists in Western countries are out on the streets campaigning hard to have such products removed from store shelves, here is an Arab country rushing to confer privileged trade status to these poison fruits of an aggressive and brutal military occupation.

In fact, one of the early economic deals after the signing of the Abraham Accords was between Israeli settler companies that produce wine, tahini, olive oil, and honey and the Dubai distribution company FAM Holdings. And prior to that, bottles from the Golan Heights Winery, in illegally occupied and annexed Syrian territory, were already on store shelves in Dubai.

In the last two weeks, Canadian activists have intensified their push to have Israeli apartheid wines de-shelved in publicly owned liquor stores, especially after multiple provincial governments in Canada rushed within days to remove Russian liquor products. In Vancouver and Victoria B.C., lively pickets and leafletting have taken place and a letter-writing campaign to the BC government has garnered over 1200 signatures to date; the campaign has some notable endorsers, including Roger Waters, former and current Vancouver city councilors, and local artists and professors amongst others.

Will this new free trade agreement cover cyber technology and other military defense products? Like what the newly created Elbit Systems Emirates is set up to offer? They were recently awarded a $53 million contract to supply technology to the UAE Air Force. 

It was reported on April 3, 2022, that the Emirati sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala Capital, was a major investor in the Israeli NGO group which produced the now-discredited Pegasus spyware. Mubadala is chaired by none other than Abu Dhabi’s crown prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. In January of this year, Mubadala also reportedly invested $100 million in six different Israeli venture-capital firms.

The role of the UAE as an economic regional power, and even a global one in some areas, should not be underplayed. From Dubai Ports World which punished workers in Canada for supporting a #BlocktheBoat picket, to these Israeli defense subsidiaries being opened in the Emirates, to the combined punch of the five leading Emirati sovereign wealth funds that amounts to a staggering $1.4 trillion in aggregate assets: all these factors explain why "Israel" signed this “historic” free trade agreement with the Emirates.

While children in Yemen are starving to death, and UNRWA remains chronically under-funded, and the exorbitant cost of living in Lebanon impoverishes even more people, the obscene wealth controlled by these Emirati regimes is being used to help strengthen the economy and stability of the Zionist state. That wealth is strengthening a state that is beating and terrorizing Palestinians right now in Al-Quds, a state that is extra-judicially assassinating Palestinians in their towns and villages, a state that denies medical treatment to babies resulting in their untimely deaths, and a state that exists on apartheid and supremacism for its survival. This betrayal of the Palestinian people by the UAE despotic leaders will never be forgotten!