"That was a way for many local farmers to make additional revenue," said Bouchbouk, whose Kasbah La Dame guesthouse employs 14 people.

The overnight raid in the old city, or kasbah, of Nablus, was one of the deadliest in the West Bank in 2022 and comes at a time of escalating tensions.

Thousands marched from Bab Souika Square in the capital towards Kasbah Square, waving Tunisian flags and chanting slogans such as “We want to take back our kidnapped country.”

In the heart of the Kasbah, opposite the shop of a honey merchant aswarm with bees, Omar showed me a great hole in the otherwise tightly packed buildings, tiled rooms open to the sky, the unrepaired blast area of French bombs.

In the 1970s, when this now-abandoned cliff-face promenade still permitted visitors to explore the natural arches and balconies down in the gorge, Constantine boasted 20 hotels in its Kasbah alone.