A walk through the ancient streets of the West Bank City of Nablus offers a rare glimpse into the Asiatic opulence that once adorned cities across the caravan routes of the Middle East.

But what was once a major Palestinian tourist and commercial centre has since the outbreak of the intifada in 2000 wilted in the face of checkpoints and near-daily Israeli military incursions.

"They call this the economic capital of Palestine but these days it is the capital of the unemployed," says Bilal Hamouda, a merchant in the ancient quarter.

Having seen some of the uprising's fiercest battles, the Old City of Nablus has been transformed into a crude memorial to local fighters, its limestone walls covered with blast stains, militia graffiti and martyrs' posters.

Lots of time to share local lore

"Nablus is the oldest city in the world. When it was founded in 2500 B.C. they called it Shechem, which means two shoulders," he says, as he leans back in a plastic chair across the street from his shop.

Then the Romans renamed it Neopolis, or 'New City' — the source of the modern name, Hamouda says in halting, practiced English.

It's also known as Jebel al-Nar — Arabic for 'Fire Mountain' — after a legend that the town repelled Napoleon's armies by lighting a bonfire and frightening packs of wild animals into attacking the French cavalry.

Others call Nablus "Little Damascus" because of its underground springs and its Turkish-style Old City, a labyrinth of meandering walkways, stone arches, and covered markets.

The Israelis still call it Shechem, referring to the two peaks that guard approaches to the city, from which the army now looks down on what it considers to be the most volatile town in the West Bank.

The Israeli military says its troops have discovered 10 bomb factories in Nablus this year alone, and that 117 of the 187 "potential" suicide bombers arrested in the West Bank in 2006 originated there.

In one of its regular incursions, the army carried out in early September a massive three-day operation in a refugee camp in the heart of the city, arresting 49 alleged militants from different Palestinian factions and destroying several houses.

In the wake of the Islamist Hamas movement's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip, Israel and the West have vowed to improve daily life in the West Bank, still ruled by president Mahmud Abbas and the secular Palestinian Authority.

But Nablus — with more than 130 000 residents — remains under siege, with all traffic into or out of town having to pass through two checkpoints, and most vehicles banned from entering or exiting at all.

The worst economy in the West Bank

In the Old City, which once thrived on Arab tourists from across Israel and the Palestinian territories, many merchants are struggling to stay in business.

"The economic situation is tied to the tourism market, and that has stopped because of the closures," says Yusef al-Jabr, owner of one of Nablus's last functioning Turkish bathhouses.

The entrance, tucked away in the heart of the Old City, opens into a series of vaulted chambers with scattered stained-glass windows and marble floors heated by hot subterranean springs, a rare surviving relic of Ottoman luxury.

Turkish baths, part of an ancient spa tradition handed down from Greece and Rome, can still be found in old cities across the Middle East and North Africa. But in Nablus, the baths are facing extinction.

Jabr says his bathhouse is around 450-500 years old, but people still refer to it as the "new bathhouse" because the city once had far older ones.

In 2002 the main steam room was struck by an Israeli missile. Jabr was able to repair the damage with some help from a brother living in the United Arab Emirates, but now he worries the bath's days are numbered.

"I'm trying to preserve our heritage here but it is very hard," Jabr says.

"The people come, but just to look. They don't use the baths and so I hardly have any income. I would make more if I turned it into a more touristy place, like a restaurant."

When Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 there were nine bathhouses in the city, but since then most have been destroyed or transformed into other things.

A few alleys down from Jabr's bathhouse another doorway opens into a vaulted chamber, its dry central fountain now surrounded by a handful of simple machines, all of them idle.

The owner, Hamed Herzullah, converted the baths into a family-run candy factory decades ago, but now even he is feeling the crunch.

"We used to have 20 employees working all day every day. Now it's just me and my family, and we only work two or three hours a day," he says.

Behind him sits a table with stacks of tiny boxes, all filled with sweet powdered sugar-coated loukoum, or Turkish Delight.

"When they have money the people come and buy, but not now," Herzullah says.

"It's (the Muslim holy month of) Ramadan, so business should be good. But the families around here are struggling to buy bread — not sweets."

AFP