““Better humans, better society”, is the slogan of the propaganda campaign for the project, or the dream of, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman.
NEOM is a Greek word, meaning the new future, as appeared in the promotional video of the project by showing shots of stunning panoramic views of the region’s mountains and blue waters.
The project aims to create a city the size of Belgium at the far end of the Saudi-Egyptian-Jordanian borders in the north of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, extending along the coast of the Red Sea.
According to the strategic documents, it costs 500 billion US dollars, equivalent to 400 hundred billion pounds sterling.
The Crown Prince aspires for the shores of his city to glow in the heart of the darkness of the desert and sea nights, to launch its own satellite, and for cars to operate with drones and robot servants to replace human workers, to clean homes and public places inside the city. He is also working on creating a site in the style of a Jurassic Park that includes mobile lizards, in addition to the technological invasion, MBS is targeting, for the imaginary city to ready within ten years of its launch and to be inhabited by a percentage of the target population, according to the statements of the Crown Prince.
He aimed to make this a national project for a country that seeks progress and advancement. This is what any Saudi citizen would seek, but the reality proved many things, the most important of which are two things detailed in our report;
The first is that this city will not be for the citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the reality that the royal palaces built in the city now proves that it will be the city of the Crown Prince and dreamers from the members of the ruling family, as well as the wealthy people of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, so there is no interest for the average citizen in that city because he will not be able to live in it, or work in it, and won’t benefit from it if it brought income which will go directly to the Crown Prince.
This reveals that the greatest loss of this project will be borne by the Saudi citizen alone, as the budget of Saudi Arabia is being spent on this project, which had a negative impact on the citizen, as salaries were decreased while costs of goods and services increased.
The second matter is the fulfillment of the dream of the Crown Prince, which became a nightmare for the people of Neom, especially the “Al-Huwaitat” tribe, whose lineage goes back to before the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the tribe’s branches extend in Saudi, Jordanian, Egyptian territories, where many generations lived in the Sinai Peninsula, and now 20,000 people members of that tribe are facing a state of oppression and intimidation aiming to force them out of their land, without compensation to their homes or lands. Rather, members of the Al-Huwaitat tribe are being evacuated without even having information on the place in which they may live after evacuating their homes.
Alia Al-Huwaiti, said “This city is built on our bones, on our blood, and this is proven by the killing of Abdulrahim Al-Huwaiti, at the hands of Saudi authorities which killed him for publishing a live stream video on social media to show people what his family is exposed to in order to force him to leave his home to be demolished, but he did not know that he documented his last moments in the world in this video, as the authorities killed him for allegedly resisting them with bullets.
Alia’s words were also proven by the arrests campaign by the Saudi authorities with orders of the young crown prince against many men of Al-Hawitat Tribe as well as the disrespectful practices against the elders of the tribe to force them to give up their land, houses, and leave the entire region.
What good do Saudis expect from a city that is being built on skulls and bodies of their people, to fulfill the dream of the boy?
Read more: NEOM’s First Achievements: Making Al-Huwaitat Tribe Disappear
