UAE’s Habtoor berates Israel as minister urges killings in Gaza

Prominent UAE billionaire Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor has condemned Israel’s rhetoric encouraging executions in Gaza, declaring life is not the property of any government or army.

In a lengthy X post on Monday, Habtoor slammed Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, for calling for the killing of 30 or 40 people in Gaza every night.

The Emirati businessman and philanthropist noted that Ben-Gvir spoke “openly and without shame” as though those he was referring to are not deserving of life.

“What human conscience can remain silent in the face of it?” he wrote. “How can an official in a state government grant himself the right to decide who deserves to live?”

Habtoor said pushing for the murder of human beings and stripping them of their humanity is not a political opinion but a dangerous moral decline that must not be dismissed.

The Al Habtoor Group chairman urged the international community and its institutions to recognize the danger of such language becoming normalized in political discourse.

He sided with the joint position by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which rejected policies that threaten Palestinians’ rights.

Habtoor stressed that the people of Gaza, their children, women, and men are human beings, and have the same right to life and dignity as every other person in the world.

“We may negotiate over borders, security, and interests,” he added.

“But there is a line no human being should ever cross in relation to another: the sanctity of human life.”