Israeli tennis player banned from Dubai Tennis Championships
Just when Dubai didn’t need it, along comes more bad publicity. This time in the shape of the controversial decision to deny Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer a visa to play in the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships.
It was always coming, of course, and no doubt the recent troubles in Gaza made it all the more inevitable. But still, the last thing Dubai needs to accompany the regular tales of economic doom is negative press with a political slant, especially at a time when media and political freedoms are already being compromised.
World number forty eight Peer, who played in Qatar last year and has a Muslim doubles partner, was due to play a first round match against the Russian Anna Chakvetadze today, but yesterday it emerged that she had been refused a visa to enter Dubai.
This $2 million tournament, now in its seventh year, will play host to nine of the world’s top ten players, but the Israeli will not feature, potentially jeopardising the tournament’s entire future and doing nothing to improve Dubai’s status as a sporting location and possible Olympic host.
No Israeli has ever been granted a visa to play in Dubai, so it is no great surprise, although the timing is. Larry Scott, chief executive of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, is less than impressed: “We knew it was an issue, but we made it clear that she was going to be in the draw and we wanted to be optimistic that she would get the visa, then they waited until the 11th hour to deny it,” he said.
With such short notice the WTA were put in a difficult position, fifty five out of fifty six competitors were already in Dubai or on their way there when the news was announced. The WTA discussed cancelling the tournament, but Peer’s family counselled against it, and the decision was made to proceed this year. Scott has warned that a repeat next year will result in the removal of the Dubai tournament from the tennis calendar, and high profile players like Venus Williams, Amelie Mauresmo, Elena Dementieva, and world number one Ana Ivanovic have already delcared their support for Peer and the governing body’s position.
It will be interesting to see what happens, the twenty one year old is still improving so will surely be eligible for next year’s even and the WTA can ill afford to lose such a lucrative tournament, but in the current climate Dubai can ill afford to lose it either.
There is a strong opinion piece of this subject in the New York Times.
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