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A Dubai-based Palestinian artist has spoken of his grief after being told by relatives in Gaza that his father, a 70-year-old heart patient, was detained by Israeli forces and is being tortured in detention.
Hazem Harb said the news of his father, Riad Harb, was relayed to his uncle's wife by a teenager who had also been held by Israeli troops.
Hazem's family has not heard from his father since he was taken from his home in Al Rimal district of Gaza city on February 2.
“He said Riad was very, very tired,” the aunt, Ghadeer Harb, tells Hazem in a recording of their phone conversation played to The National.
“At some point he said he thought Riad had died. They hit him on the head,” she adds.
Ms Harb met the 17-year-old former detainee at Al Nasser hospital, in the south of Gaza.
“I don't understand why they would take him,” Hazem told The National.
“He is weak, needs constant care and would collapse without regular intake of salt. He can barely walk.”
The Israeli army did not respond to The National’s request for comment on the elderly Mr Harb's whereabouts, or why he was detained.
Hazem said his father was detained after Israeli troops stormed the building he was living in with other family members.
The artist's sister, Huda, witnessed the assault by soldiers, but was not told where he was taken.
Hazem had been issuing pleas on social media for news of his father, who he last saw in September when he travelled to Gaza to be with him during a heart operation.
He said his sister was visiting with her family to check on their father when soldiers entered the building and began firing shots.
One of the bullets ricocheted and wounded their father.
“They placed explosives on the building walls,” Hazem said, recounting what his sister told him in a phone call soon after the incident.
The soldiers began entering flats in the building and ordered all residents outside, before separating the women from the men.
The males, including Hazem's father, brother, brother-in-law and nephews, were all stripped and arrested, he said.
Some were later released, including one of Hazem's six family members who were detained.
He said his nephew Mohammad, 16, had become “effectively a mute” because of trauma.
Hazem said his agony over his family's ordeal, amid Israel's war in Gaza that has claimed about 28,000 lives in a little over four months, has only been compounded by seeing one of his three sisters and a niece speaking about their plight in videos posted on news outlets.
In one video Huda, who fled to the southern city of Rafah, speaks to Al Jazeera about being targeted by Israeli strikes. Her daughter spoke to The National about the same ordeal.
Hazem described the difference between what he saw during his last visit to Gaza and his family's situation today as “surreal”.
At the time his sister, who now lives in a tent among more than a million displaced Gazans in Rafah, had cooked the famous Palestinian dish maqluba for him in a beautiful home on Gaza city's corniche, he said.
The artist said he enjoyed living there, even though most of his time was spent at the city's main Al Shifa hospital, now destroyed by the war, while his father underwent open-heart surgery.
“I took 11,000 photos,” he said.
“It was almost as if I was saying goodbye.”
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Aged just 11, Khulood Al Najjar’s daughter, Nora, bravely attempted to fight off Philip Spence. Her finger was injured when she put her hand in between the claw hammer and her mother’s head.
As a vital witness, she was forced to relive the ordeal by police who needed to identify the attacker and ensure he was found guilty.
Now aged 16, Nora has decided she wants to dedicate her career to helping other victims of crime.
“It was very horrible for her. She saw her mum, dying, just next to her eyes. But now she just wants to go forward,” said Khulood, speaking about how her eldest daughter was dealing with the trauma of the incident five years ago. “She is saying, 'mama, I want to be a lawyer, I want to help people achieve justice'.”
Khulood’s youngest daughter, Fatima, was seven at the time of the attack and attempted to help paramedics responding to the incident.
“Now she wants to be a maxillofacial doctor,” Khulood said. “She said to me ‘it is because a maxillofacial doctor returned your face, mama’. Now she wants to help people see themselves in the mirror again.”
Khulood’s son, Saeed, was nine in 2014 and slept through the attack. While he did not witness the trauma, this made it more difficult for him to understand what had happened. He has ambitions to become an engineer.
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This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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