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Gaza's first five-star hotel provides luxury and hope amid the blockades | World news | The GuardianThe al-Mashtal is Gaza's first and only five-star hotel, an ambitious project in a place where there are no tourists and around 70% of the population lives below the poverty line. After a troubled history the hotel is in the process of a gradual opening; the early signs are that it faces a challenging future.
Construction began in the mid-1990s in the optimistic days following the signing of the Oslo accords when many believed lasting peace and a Palestinian state were realistic prospects. Funded by a consortium of Palestinian businessmen and Gulf state backers, it was originally planned as an office block but the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada brought work to a halt.
The building, redesignated as a hotel to be operated by the upmarket chain Mövenpick, was eventually completed in 2006. A year later Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip following bloody battles with their rivals Fatah, and Mövenpick pulled out. The hotel was mothballed.
Then a year ago ArcMed, a Spanish group, agreed to take over the management and open the hotel.
But the pool, which could be a big draw, remains off-limits until the management can figure out a way to avoid transgressing conservative Gaza's social mores. Men and women are forbidden from swimming together and even if the hotel has segregated days, it has yet to find a way ofscreening female swimmers from public view.
Like everywhere in Gaza it is alcohol-free. Of the 70 staff only five are women and the management has been careful to offer shift patterns that respect their needs.
Does Judaism want women to move over? - Israel Jewish Scene, YnetnewsThe blogosphere lit up recently with news of Yiddish language signs placed in a predominately haredi neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, asking women to “please step aside when men walk towards you” in the street.
this tradition has to do with a passage found in the Talmud which states, “There are three who must not pass between, nor may others pass between them, and they are: a dog, a palm tree and a woman” (Pesachim 111a).
The Talmud (Horiyot 13b) indicates that the reason a man should not walk between two women has to do with the superstition that it may impair the man’s ability to remember the Torah he learned.
But the pool, which could be a big draw, remains off-limits until the management can figure out a way to avoid transgressing conservative Gaza's social mores. Men and women are forbidden from swimming together and even if the hotel has segregated days, it has yet to find a way ofscreening female swimmers from public view.
Like everywhere in Gaza it is alcohol-free. Of the 70 staff only five are women and the management has been careful to offer shift patterns that respect their needs.
But the pool, which could be a big draw, remains off-limits until the management can figure out a way to avoid transgressing conservative Gaza's social mores. Men and women are forbidden from swimming together and even if the hotel has segregated days, it has yet to find a way ofscreening female swimmers from public view.
Like everywhere in Gaza it is alcohol-free. Of the 70 staff only five are women and the management has been careful to offer shift patterns that respect their needs.
There are places in Israel where men cannot sit next to women and women cannot have bare arms.
The al-Mashtal doesn't have tourists and sits next to a military training camp, but its very existence is a symbol of optimism
