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Monday Oct. 25, 2010 10:21 AM (EST+7)
Dubai ticket to the 'good life' for expat Palestinians


Read more: Dubai, Palestinian expatriat, Palestinian expatriats

DUBAI, October 25 (JMCC) - Palestinian lawyer Ahmed dances to thumping hip-hop in Dubai’s exclusive nightclub, The Sanctuary. Below the $50,000 per night suite of the Atlantis hotel, on the man-made ‘Palm’ island, the club fills with foreign businessmen, lawyers, bankers and property agents.

The $15,000 bottle of champagne on the menu is just out of Ahmed’s price range, but lying back on the plush red velvet sofa he recalls his former life.

“In Jordan I drove a Honda, here in Dubai, doing the same job, I drive a Porsche.”

“I trained in Jordan,” says Ahmed, “but it is here that there is a chance of success. If you work hard it pays off.”

Nearly 100,000 Palestinians live and work Dubai. In the 1948 war, when the state of Israel was established, thousands of Palestinians were made refugees across the Arab world. More followed in the 1967 and 1973 Israeli-Arab wars.

“Many Palestinians have been here since the 1970s. They came as contractors. My father was one,” says a senior Palestinian news editor. “They were welcomed in at the start of the building boom, and a select few were naturalized.”

Looking out from the restaurant window of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, at the jungle of shining glass skyscrapers sprawling among man-made oases, it is hard to believe that only a few decades ago this land was mainly desert.

Dubai has fast become a land of economic opportunity for workers from across the globe. Some estimate that the foreign population of this emirate is as high as 80 percent.

“Approximately 160 nationalities reside here,” says Christian Koch, Director of International Studies in the Gulf Research Centre (GRC).

LAND OF OPPORTUNITY

Observers describe Dubai as first and foremost an economic animal.

Permanent residency is restricted to the minority national population, who also receive heavy subsidies and financial donations from the ruling sheikhs.

“This is a mixed society but with limited integration,” says Koch. “People come here for economic opportunity and when the job ends, people leave and go home.” Prospects for naturalization in the UAE are extremely slim.

How one obtains a visa is indicative. “Visa applications are funneled through the employer. Your company will acquire a visa on your behalf, and when it expires you return home,” explains Henton, a social analyst who didn’t want to give his last name. Losing one’s job can also entail losing the visa.

RECESSION

For years Dubai seemed a rainbow with an accessible pot of gold.  “Palestinians in Dubai today tend to occupy white-collar positions in society,” says Noor, a Lebanese-Palestinian filmmaker. “Construction management, medicine, law, business, and high-end media positions are common forms of employment.”

But the world recession hit Dubai hard. Property prices and investment nosedived.

By July 2009, shares in many property firms had lost 80 percent of their value. Speculators and investors fled the country.

“I remember the wasteland of abandoned cars at the airport,” says Ahmed.

“Here, a bounced check is a criminal, not civil offense,” says Henry, a businessman who didn’t want to reveal his company. “You can be thrown in jail.” That was the prospect, that many wounded entrepreneurs feared.

“The recession hit Palestinians as hard as it hit everyone else,” says Laila, a Palestinian psychologist, “but not harder.”

In construction, the Palestinian company Arab-Tech was one of the first victims of the crash.

The effect of the financial crisis was more striking in the occupied Palestinian territories. For the families of the thousands of Palestinians who lost their jobs in the recession, this source of income was cut off.

SANCTUARY

Now, as the crisis has leveled off, Palestinians say Dubai is still a favored Arab destination.

“The UAE is the only country that didn’t ask me why I don’t have a national ID number in my Jordanian passport,” says Noor. This detail indicates that Noor is not originally from Jordan, and at every other Arabic country airport, she maintains, it causes her problems.

“This [ease of passage] would not happen in Lebanon and Syria.”

Furthermore, unlike in many Arab countries, in Dubai Palestinians are not discriminated against by employers because of their nationality, says Noor.

“I have many good things to say about Dubai. I have been given many excellent jobs here because I deserve them and not because of where I am from.”

This contrasts with Noor’s country of citizenship, Lebanon, where social integration is often curtailed by government regulation. Until recently, Palestinians were banned from as many as 70 forms of employment.

* Some names have been changed in the article at the request of the sources
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