Abd Hamid, in his 20s, is from that village but had been unable to go there for 18 years due to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. "Do you know what it is like for people not to have seen their families for 18 years?" he asked. "This was our chance to change things!"

The Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon began in 1978. In 1982, in an attempt to crush the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and defeat the struggles by workers and farmers in Lebanon, Israeli troops, with Washington's backing, launched a massive invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut.

After three months of heroic resistance against vastly superior military forces, the PLO led an organized retreat from West Beirut. Israeli forces, supported by U.S. marines and other imperialist occupation troops, imposed a rightist government in Lebanon.

For almost two decades the Zionist regime, allied with the rightist South Lebanon Army (SLA), maintained a ruthless occupation of the south.

Tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians have perished and hundreds of thousands have been forced out of their homes and into refugee camps. Close to 1,000 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the conflict.  
 
Failure to break Lebanese resistance
But the U.S.-backed Israeli occupation failed to break the resistance of the Lebanese people. And it sparked growing opposition within Israel itself--beginning with a September 1982 protest by 400,000 in Tel Aviv in response to the Israeli-backed massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps of West Beirut.

This failure eventually led the Zionist regime under Prime Minister Ehud Barak to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon, precipitating the collapse of the Israeli-created SLA and the triumphant return of Lebanese to their land.

"Tens of thousands of people reacted the same way," Abd Hamid recounted. "The highway to the south was jammed as residents moved to retake their lost homes. We were joined by people from other regions of Lebanon, not just the south. It was an unstoppable movement. The Israeli troops blew up the bridge leading to our zone but within a couple of hours people built another temporary, and dangerous, bridge and we crossed."

"About half a million people have ties to the previously occupied south," explained Hadi Bekdash, one of the activists who helped organize demonstrations in Beirut over the last few months against the Israeli bombings and occupation, in a phone interview from Beirut. "The southern suburbs of Beirut are emptying out as masses are heading south." These are neighborhoods of mainly Shiite Muslim working class and displaced working farmers with origins in southern Lebanon.

Abd Hamid added, "My car was the first to reach Kfar Hamam. Just moments before reaching the village, the local South Lebanon Army commander surrendered to the only authority around--the mayor. They were immediately handed over to the Hezbollah resistance fighters who by now were part of our car caravans. Everywhere we could see abandoned armored personnel carriers and tanks of the SLA. Now many of these weapons are in the hands of the Resistance," referring to Hezbollah combatants.

"Within hours the SLA militia, the collaborators, disintegrated before us. As of today, more than 1,000 have surrendered and thousands more fled toward the enemy lines," he said in the May 24 interview.

"As we entered, the residents of the village greeted us with showers of flowers and rice. The euphoric party has been going on for 48 hours now in all the villages and streets. You see people dancing the dabke [a Lebanese folk dance] everywhere. People have made it right up to the Israeli border fences and stared the enemy troops down. The Israeli occupation ended in humiliation, and we owe this victory in large part to the efforts of the Resistance."

One high point was the liberation of the Khiam Prison from the hands of the SLA. Five hundred villagers stormed the prison and released 144 prisoners while the SLA forces fled. These were all prisoners held for their activities against the Israeli occupation.

"The village right next to ours is Rachaya Fukhar," Abd Hamid continued. "This is a Christian village. Today a caravan of 15 carloads from there came to our village, which is Muslim, to celebrate the liberation together. We will not allow the Zionists to divide us along sectarian lines."  
 
Reaction by Israel soldiers
As Israeli soldiers poured back across the border, a number of them expressed their opposition to the long occupation of Lebanon. The May 25 International Herald Tribune reports one soldier commenting, "We have nothing to do over there. It is better for them to be there and for us to be here." Another stated, "You can't win a guerrilla war." Yet another soldier said he felt "sadness because we surrendered, in a way, and happiness because maybe soldiers will stop getting killed."

In a threat of further aggression, Israeli prime minister Barak declared that his regime would consider attacks on Israel by Lebanese fighters as an act of war by the governments of Lebanon and Syria.

Meanwhile, Washington and Paris are seeking to contain their political losses by pushing for an intervention force in southern Lebanon under the United Nations banner. There are currently 4,500 UN troops in Lebanon north of the newly liberated zone. With U.S. and French backing, UN secretary general Kofi Annan is proposing to beef up the force to 8,000 troops and deploy them in the south. Paris, the former colonial ruler of Lebanon, would play a major role in the deployment.

Meanwhile, protests by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation of their land have picked up again. Starting in mid-May, thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip engaged in sustained mass protests.

The central demand was for the immediate release of 1,650 Palestinian political prisoners. In the course of the demonstrations, Israeli troops killed four and wounded hundreds. At one point Israeli soldiers exchanged fire with infuriated Palestinian Authority police.  
 
 
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