RAWABI, July 12 -- Kufr Aqab is dense and urban, north of Jerusalem, where Israeli checkpoints divide neighborhoods from the rest of the occupied territory. The stalls are wedged beneath houses. The arenas are small. But Musleh, who is 30 and has been breeding horses for 13 years, does not consider this a compromise. He considers it survival.

On a hillside in Rawabi, the planned Palestinian city rising from the West Bank's limestone ridges, competitors recently showed their horses before Conrad Detailleur, a Belgian competition judge who has traveled the global equestrian circuit. In a setting that felt both incongruous and entirely Palestinian, the animals moved with the studied grace of a tradition far older than the checkpoints that n...