When the cargo plane touched down on the tarmac at Kennedy International Airport on Friday afternoon, a cacophonous barking could be heard coming from the hold.
Maad Abu-Ghazalah stood on the runway below, anxiously waiting. There were exactly 69 dogs onboard, all from his shelter in the West Bank. The hold opened and a set of eyes caught his through a crate door: It was Lucas.
Then came Jimmy, Carlos, Farouk, Zoe, all of whom Mr. Abu-Ghazalah had cared for at Daily Hugz, the rescue facility he set up in Asira ash-Shamaliya, outside his hometown, Nablus. The dogs were mostly abandoned, many were feral and a number of them had lost legs after being hit by cars.
The shelter had been “like paradise,” Mr. Abu-Ghazalah said. But in December, as conditions in the West Bank deteriorated amid the Israel-Hamas war, he decided he could no longer keep it running. So he called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals International. And the S.P.C.A. called the ARK.
The ARK at J.F.K. is something Noah himself could not have imagined: a privately owned, round-the-clock operation at New York’s largest airport built to accommodate a range of guests with a variety of needs, from purebred racehorses to exotic zoo animals.
The facility, which encompasses 14 acres and 178,000 square feet, prepares animals to fly around the world, making sure they are calm, traveling at comfortable temperatures and equipped with enough food and water. It also receives animals when they arrive in New York, quarantining them if necessary and preparing them for the next steps of their journey.
