NABLUS, West Bank — In a parlor thick with cigarette smoke and hope, three dozen Palestinian men sit glued to the oversized screen where their bets are playing out.
The cramped brokerage office, resembling a hushed version of an off-track betting hall, is one setting for the hottest trend in an otherwise ailing Palestinian economy: investing in the local stock market.
The tiny Nablus-based stock exchange, known as the Palestine Securities Exchange, has been around since 1997 but caught the imagination of ordinary Palestinians only during the last year.
The market's benchmark Al Quds index has more than quadrupled since January, breaking the symbolic 1,000 threshold for the first time Nov. 6 and briefly thrusting past 1,300 since then.
These days, merchants, taxi drivers and housewives with even modest savings are suddenly crowding offices like this one in downtown Nablus. Experts say the surge shows that Palestinians are starting to feel hopeful after five years of conflict, and that the 28 Palestinian companies listed on the exchange are seen as bargains.
Many Nablus investors have come to view stocks in these high-profile firms as their best option because of comparatively low interest rates offered by banks and because so many other industries have atrophied in the face of Israeli-imposed travel restrictions and periodic street combat here.
The result seems incongruous: a stock market that has soared while most Palestinian commerce wilts, unemployment remains high and nearly half the residents live in poverty.
"Because of the intifada, there is no trade going on. The market is really dead. So we look for an alternative to make a living," investor Samer Malhis said.
On a recent morning, Malhis tracked a pair of his stocks, an industrial-investment company and the Palestinian electric utility, as share prices crawled across a television monitor at Global Securities Co., among the largest of seven authorized brokerages in the West Bank.
Malhis, 40, said his business supplying leather for shoe factories had withered since the outbreak of fighting five years ago, which was fierce in Nablus. Instead of pouring money into his livelihood, Malhis has invested $10,000 in Palestinian stocks. Now he spends most mornings at the brokerage -- there is no trading floor at the exchange -- to see how his stock choices are faring. He figures he made about $3,000 last year.
