Any random tourist who happens to return to Nablus today, after seeing it 10 years ago, would not believe his eyes. “Could this be the capital of the young suicide bombers?” he would undoubtedly ask himself. There’s no question about it. The second largest city in the West Bank has undergone a total metamorphosis. 

The streets of the city are bustling with life. Shoppers from other cities across the West Bank, but mainly from Israel’s Arab towns and villages, pull up in luxurious tour buses. The shops are brimming with merchandise, and the markets are teeming with people, mostly women, lugging their shopping baskets and bags. Dozens of people stand in line outside Nablus’s crowded sweet shops, among the city’s best-known establishments, famous for their baklava and kanafe. These customers eat their fill, and then take home even more in carefully wrapped boxes, so that the sweet taste stays with them. Then there is the new crown jewel, rising above downtown Nablus: a shopping mall with elegant shops selling everything from designer clothing to computer games and cell phones.

Welcome to Nablus, 2013. It’s not at all what you thought it would be.

Now let’s go back 10 years. I arrived here during the second intifada to find a city under siege by IDF forces. Back then, militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and even Fatah could send suicide bombers out to the cities of the Sharon — like Netanya and Hadera, and even as far as Tel Aviv, with intolerable ease. We were caught in a vicious circle, with every terrorist attack followed by a military operation followed by a terrorist attack followed by a military operation, etc. It lasted like that for about half a year.