Israeli jewellery firm Leviev lacks a trade license to open boutique stores at the Burj Dubai and on the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai despite announcing plans to do so, a senior official at Dubai’s Department of Economic Department has said.
Leviev, owned by the Israeli-Uzbek billionaire Lev Leviev, recently said it would be opening a flagship store at the Dubai Mall, part of the complex housing the world’s tallest building, and a mini-boutique at the Atlantis Hotel on the Palm in the fourth quarter of this year.
“We are aware of these reports and have not granted a trade license to any business of this name,” Ali Ebrahim, deputy director general for executive affairs in Dubai, told UAE daily Gulf News.
“If such an application does come to us we will deal with it accordingly.”
Israeli businesses and individuals are banned from operating in the UAE as per the Arab League’s primary boycott of Israel.
Ebrahim also said precautionary measures have been taken to ensure that neither Israeli citizens themselves are allowed to operate in Dubai, nor be able to operate through non-Israeli partners.
“There are no loopholes,” said Ebrahim. “We check backgrounds of businesses that apply.”
The diamond firm controls some of the largest private mines in the world and is also the largest privately-held polisher and cutter of diamonds.
Leviev already has a concession in Levant Jewellers, wholly owned by Bin Khadra, in the lobby of the Al-Qasr Hotel in the Madinat Jumeirah area in Dubai, which opened on March 18 this year.
Its retail plans in Dubai has led many Jewish and Palestinian advocacy groups to actively campaign against the diamond jewellers.
The campaign accuses owner Lev Leviev of building Jewish colonies on occupied Palestinian land through his chairmanship of holding company Africa Israel investments.
A subsidiary, Danya Cebus, is claimed to be involved in the construction of the colony of Har Homa between occupied Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Zufim, built on the village of Jayyous, and Ariel, built in 1978 on a number of former Palestinian villages.
Danya Cebus is also claimed to be involved in Ma’ale Adumin, which surrounds occupied East Jerusalem and is the largest and most controversial of Israel’s 126 colonies in the West Bank.
Jewish-Palestinian advocacy group The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East (Adalah) and New York-based Jews Against the Occupation are amongst those campaigning for a boycott against Leviev’s companies due to their construction of Israeli colonies.
Leviev, who currently lives in London, recently told an Israeli newspaper that the status of occupied Jerusalem, where his companies are claimed to be building colonies, is not for up for negotiation.
“For me, Israel, Jerusalem and Haifa are all the same,” he told the paper. “To decide the future of Jerusalem? It belongs to the Jewish people. What is there to decide? Jerusalem is not a topic for discussion.”
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