DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (Reuters) -- The United Arab Emirates vowed Wednesday to ban all Walt Disney Co. products from being sold in the oil-rich Gulf Arab state if a controversial exhibit expected to depict Jerusalem as Israel's capital goes ahead.
UAE Information and Culture Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zaid al-Nahayan also told Reuters his country had called on all other Arab and Islamic nations to join the boycott if the U.S. leisure and entertainment giant allowed the display at a millennium exhibition in a Florida amusement park."If Disney goes ahead with this exhibit, not one Disney product -- not a toy, a film, a game or a book -- will be allowed to enter or be displayed in the UAE. All ads in the UAE media will be banned," Sheikh Abdullah said.
The status of Jerusalem, the site of Islam's third holiest shrine, is an extremely sensitive and emotive issue in the Middle East and has yet to be agreed in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its "eternal and indivisible capital" while the Palestinians want Arab East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war, to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
A regional boycott would come at a high cost to Disney which sells an estimated $100 million of products a year in the Middle East. Disney officials have said sales in the nation alone, where half the population is under 15, could top $500 million by 2005.
Disney products are on prominent display throughout the country's luxury shopping malls, and actors dressed as Mickey Mouse and other characters are flown in from the firm's theme parks.