Gaza's elite enjoy riding at Faisal

[oberliner]

A group of young women wearing brightly-patterned headscarves and high heels beneath their jilbabs order ice cream and fruit cocktails; elsewhere men are puffing on water pipes.

But the main attraction is not the company, the menu, nor the refreshing evening breeze that blows off the nearby Mediterranean coast. People come to watch the horses.

Faisal is Gaza's only riding club, open for the past five years and, despite the Israeli blockade and its grim economic consequences, doing rather well. It started with a nucleus of Arabian horses bred in Gaza, but this has been recently supplemented with horses from Egypt and Syria imported through the tunnels dug beneath the border at the southern end of the Strip.

"We choose the horses over the internet, looking at video clips," said chief trainer Ahmed Abd Ali. "We also take advice from our trading partners in Egypt."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/06/gaza-riding-club-faisal

[Recursion]

1. Black markets enrich kingpins?

Who knew?

[aquart]

2. Those are some big tunnels if a horse can walk them.

[Ken Burch]

3. Horseback-riding isn't all THAT aristocratic.

It's not like they're in LA or Monaco, partying with the Saudi princes.

[oberliner]

4. Where does the article say that horseback-riding is aristocratic?

It does seem that these activities are limited to a very small percentage of Gazans, however, and that is a shame.

[Ken Burch]

5. Well, there's the implication that this is some sort of decadent privelege

I wish more Gazans were able to ride these horses, but the implication of this article is that the fact that some of Gaza's leaders do this is proof of their living lives of obscene privelege.

Those leaders aren't my favorite people, but of all the things you could bust them on, riding horses is fairly small potatoes.

[oberliner]

6. Well I think the point is that there is an "elite" in Gaza who live very differently

from the rest of the people living there.

[Ken Burch]

7. And Gaza is the ONLY place where that happens?

n/t.

[oberliner]

8. No - it is very similar to a lot of places in that regard nt