Israel Matzav

'Besieged' Gaza City gets new five-star hotel, shopping mall

They're not allowing pictures, but Gaza has a new luxury hotel. It's called the Moby Dick.

The hotel, called Moby Dick, will be inaugurated in the coming days, and Gazans hope it attracts not just Hamas men but also Western tourists. If they do arrive, they'll be able to enjoy luxurious banquet halls made of marble and stone, first-class restaurants and a shining swimming pool.

In the meantime, the hotel staff refuses to disclose rates or let the press take pictures of the rooms.

The inauguration of the new hotel is another sign of the economic recovery in the Strip. Despite campaigns calling on Israel to lift its blockade on Gaza, even Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh admits that things are going well.

"We have emerged from the siege stage and are now at the development and construction stage," he said. "We have no problem obtaining cement, iron and other construction materials. The storehouses in Gaza are full – we received everything through the tunnels."

Indeed, this summer marks the start of a new fashion in Gaza: Renting out rooms on the beach. Such a room will cost a family about NIS 1,400 (about $405) a day, and the demand is high.

A resort village with swimming pools and restaurants opened in Rafah several weeks ago, and another restaurant is planned off the city's coast.

Sounds like they're starving and besieged, doesn't it?

In the meantime, a new shopping mall also opened in Gaza this week. This is from Egypt's al-Masry al-Ayoum.

After marking its inaugural opening on Tuesday, the three-story mall in Gaza City now offers products running the gamut. The supermarket has nearly all possible commodities. Shoe stores with popular brand names, such as Nike, Adidas and Fox, sit next to clothing shops displaying window mannequins with hot miniskirts and vibrantly colored t-shirts.

On the Andaluseyya mall’s top floor, customers are able to enjoy quality time with their families, eating at restaurants, playing arcade games and, for the first time in Gaza, watching a movie in the cinema. Escalators, rare sites in this besieged coastal enclave, escort people between floors. To top it off, air conditioning provides much-needed respite from the oppressive heat outside.

In addition to recent construction that paved the way for this mall to open, Gaza City is in the process of opening several sea-side resorts. After three years with limited to non-existent commercial building, construction firms are now breaking stereotypical images of Gaza as a destitute territory with conditions comparable to the most-devastated sub-Saharan regions.

And things are so hard in Gaza that the mall's developer could not smuggle in the glass doors or the escalators.

Mall investor Ihab al-Esawy, in accordance with such calls, said the tunnels can only provide the territory certain goods. He was unable to obtain glass doors because they could not be smuggled through. Acquiring important items for his mall from Israel, moreover, remains difficult despite the admissibility of the products.

“I faced too many hardships,” says Esawy. “I had to wait seven months for the escalator until it was allowed into Gaza through Israel and I had to pay extra taxes.”

Aren't you just crying your eyes out for him? Well, he's laughing all the way to the bank. How crowded is the mall with starving Gazans? Elder has some pictures here.

Read the whole thing.

By the way, the mall is called Andaluseyya, a word which most westerners are used to seeing spelled Andalusia. Andalusia is an area in Spain, which was once Muslim. Many Muslims continue to consider Andalusia Dar al-Islam (Islamic territory) and hope to reconquer it in the future.

Labels: Andalusia, Gaza plenty

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:23 PM