mmeman - I don't think its a case of people at Leeds or Newcastle wanting DTV to close but simply realising that in the North East of England insufficient traffic exists to support three International Airports.
You also point out demand exists for places like Palma, Alicante, Tenerife etc however if this was the case then DTV would have flights to all the destinations you named. The simple fact is however that these routes have been tried and proved unsuccessful as they were not sufficiently supported by the folks in Teeside and while you may not like to fly from Newcastle or Leeds for whatever reason the rest of local population prefer to fly from airports other than DTV.
I would also like to point out, and I am not sure where you got this information from, but at no point were Emirates considering flights from DTV
