Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon was ending in humiliation last night as Israeli soldiers opened fire on their own allied militiamen who were trying to seek sanctuary across the frontier, killing two fighters and a woman and wounding six civilians.

A day that saw the liberation of 160 prisoners from the notorious torture jail at Khiam, the capture by Hizbollah guerrillas of vast amounts of Israeli armour and ammunition and a desperate attempt to evacuate the last Israeli troops from a Crusader castle thus closed with Israel fighting its own Lebanese allies.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli Prime Minister, could never have dreamt of the speed of the collapse; that within 48 hours, Hizbollah gunmen would be lounging in their villages in sight of the northern Israeli border. Nor that the so-called "South Lebanon Army" militia &endash; so pampered by the Israelis over two decades - would disintegrate, abandoning their armoured personnel carriers, tanks and shells to the Hizbollah guerrillas.

Yet not a single Hizbollah rocket was fired over the Israeli border and not a shot fired at the Israelis by the Iranian-supported resistance army. The only gunfire came from Israel's side of the frontier.

Not only did Israeli troops shoot at their own militia allies but they poured tank fire on to the roads and wadis of southern Lebanon in a last, vain attempt to prevent the collapse of the occupation zone.

Near Adaissi, a Merkava tank fired a shell into a BBC car used by correspondent Jeremy Bowen, killing his Lebanese driver, while Israeli helicopters almost hit a car-load of Lebanese journalists near Blat.

Israel talked of offering sanctuary to some - not all - of its former Lebanese militiamen although the deputy defence minister, Ephraim Sneh, claimed that Israel preferred not to do so because "it's very cruel to turn someone into a refugee". That was not the view of the SLA gunmen who streamed towards the border last night, carrying suitcases on their heads and children in their arms.

The last Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon, the very end of an occupation that has cost up to 20,000 lives and lasted for 22 years in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions, were hiding inside their artillery battery in the old Crusader keep at Beaufort Castle last night, awaiting a helicopter evacuation under the cover of darkness. Hizbollah mortar shells continued to fall around the castle, whose ruins stand high above the Litani river gorge. The Israelis' final retreat will mark the defeat by a rag-tag guerrilla army of one of the world's most powerful fighting forces.

At Khiam, frightened SLA men - in a scene reminiscent of the end of the Second World War - unlocked the cells of 160 men, almost all of them Shia Muslims and some held without trial for 16 years, allowing the inmates to run for their lives through the fields northwards. Three torture chambers and a whipping yard were abandoned by the proIsraeli gunmen, surviving proof of the torments that the prisoners endured for almost a quarter of a century.

General Antoine Lahd, the SLA commander, who had earlier announced in Paris his imminent return to "rally" his troops, never showed up. His men left behind the symbols of their defeat: tons of armour, tanks and armoured personnel carriers, many of them with their engines still running.

Hizbollah guerrillas - thousands of them with rifles, rocket-propelled  grenades and mobile phones - organised a victory parade of captured equipment amid scenes of jubilation from returning villagers.

The hundreds of SLA men surrendering to the Hizbollah were handed over, apparently untouched, to Lebanese army troops, although some Shia Muslims who lived under Israeli occupation were angry that their former tormentors had escaped so easily.

A woman in Yarin, close to the Israeli border, said she had once been forced to kiss the boots of an SLA officer but now found he would receive only a statutory two-month jail sentence by way of punishment. But the SLA was by last night no longer in existence. The Israelis were on the run. And Hizbollah was celebrating the first victory of an Arab guerrilla force over Israel. The Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are unlikely to have ignored this week's lesson.

Among the SLA families seeking refuge in Israel were the widow and six daughters of Major Saad Haddad, the first Lebanese army officer to collaborate with Israel and whose militia, then called the "Free Lebanon Army", regularly shelled Lebanese villagers for allegedly allowing Palestinian guerrillas to live among them. But the SLA was always a surrogate force, its members paid by the Israelis at a rate of up to $500 a month.

Indeed, one of the final blows to morale was the discovery by SLA officers that Israel's promise of severance pay, up to $15,000, was not going to be honoured. A tent village has been set up in Galilee for ex-SLA officials, some of whom have been involved in torture in Khiam. Many of these are expected to be given exile in France - the largest number of war criminals to be sent into Europe since the Bosnia war. <end>

As the Lebanese people have finally liberated themselves from more than two

decades of Israeli occupation, most American commentators are reacting with

only one concern: Will northern Israel be safe from attack?

The focus on this misleading question is the result of a widespread acceptance

of the official Israeli line that its 22-year rampage in southern Lebanon was in

essence a futile quest for peace in a hostile region. This view is

consistent with the pattern of putting Israeli lives and concerns over

those of Arabs, but it is completely inconsistent with the history of the

occupation and the experiences of its Lebanese victims.

It is blind to the tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians killed by Israel

during

the occupation, the hundreds of thousands made homeless and the scores of

destroyed villages and cities. It forgets the ghastly massacres of unarmed

civilians for which the Israelis have been responsible in Lebanon,

including the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and the U.N.

base at Qana. It ignores the Lebanese civilians held hostage to this day in

Israeli prisons and the hundreds of Lebanese men, women and children held

prisoner and tortured at the notorious Khiam detention center run by the

Israeli-controlled militia, the South Lebanese Army. It does not

acknowledge the pain of the Lebanese nation at being divided for almost a

quarter of a century and subject to continuous attacks on its civilian

population and infrastructure.

No wonder, given this history, that the scenes of liberation from south Lebanon

have been truly extraordinary. Hundreds of Lebanese streamed back into

villages and towns from which they had been expelled by Israel. Tears of

joy flowed as relatives were reunited after years of separation. Hundreds

of civilians stormed Khiam, freeing about 140 prisoners and exposing the

hideous apparatus of torture and terror employed there.

These scenes have potentially far-reaching implications. Can others in the

Middle East living under foreign military occupation, such as the

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, have failed to register what real

liberation looks like?

Everywhere Hezbollah fighters, derided by the Israeli and U.S. governments as

"terrorists," conducted themselves in an exemplary manner, handing

prisoners over to government troops and ensuring that the liberation was

not marred by acts of vengeance. These supposed fanatical terrorists were

once again shown to be a disciplined and responsible liberation force.

How quickly it is forgotten that Hezbollah is itself a product of the Israeli

occupation, founded in 1982 with the aim of driving out the Israeli army

and freeing the south of the hellish experience of occupation. The fretting

about potential Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israeli towns is

misplaced, given that since 1996 Hezbollah has almost always carried out

such attacks in response to Israeli killings of Lebanese civilians, often

only after repeated atrocities. By contrast, in recent months Israel

repeatedly attacked Lebanese civilian targets, such as power stations, in

response to attacks on its soldiers in Lebanon.

The Israeli army may have fled Lebanon in chaos and humiliation, but not

without issuing dire threats of massive attacks against Lebanon. Israel's

retreat from Lebanon is incomplete and insufficient. Israel was driven out

of most of southern Lebanon by an extraordinary campaign of popular

resistance, but continues to occupy the Shabaa Farms area. It holds

numerous Lebanese hostage. There is every indication that Israel still

feels it can attack the Lebanese people with impunity. Israel's foreign

minister, David Levy, recently threatened that Israel would continue to

target Lebanese civilians "blood for blood, child for child."

The international community, while paying lip service to Lebanese territorial

integrity, failed to exert any pressure on Israel to end its occupation.

Instead it was left to resistance groups such as Hezbollah to enforce U.N.

Security Council Resolution 425, which in 1978 demanded Israel's

unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon "forthwith."

The United States, Israel's main patron, financier and arms supplier, has been

particularly culpable by repeatedly using its diplomatic muscle, including its

Security Council veto, to protect Israel from international criticism after its

invasions and atrocities. Rather than helping enforce Resolution 425, which

it voted for, the U.S. government line has been that "all foreign forces

should withdraw from Lebanon."

This was an obvious ploy intended to buy time and space for Israel by drawing

a false moral and legal equivalence between Israel's brutal and illegal

occupation of south Lebanon and the Syrian presence in Lebanon. Syria's

role there is controversial, supported by many and opposed by others as

overbearing, while the Israeli occupation was universally despised, as was

amply demonstrated by the instantaneous collapse of its proxy militia. Had

the United States been willing to stand by international law rather than

making disingenuous excuses for outrageous Israeli conduct, the

international community might have been able to act responsibly toward

Lebanon.

The obvious questions now are: Will Israel be forced to complete its

withdrawal from all of Lebanon, or will it be allowed to hang on to the

Shabaa Farms, where it has built a ski resort and a settlement for

Ethiopians? Will Israel be seriously pressured to release the Lebanese

hostages, or will it yet again be granted an exception to the most basic

international human rights norms? Will Israel be made to pay the

reparations it owes to the Lebanese for the invasions, bombings and

occupation, as is supposed to now be the norm for international aggressors?

When will the American government and media acknowledge that Lebanese and

Arab lives and rights are as important and worthy as those of Israelis?

Finally, and most importantly, will the international community at long

last live up to its responsibility to prevent Israel from ever again

invading or bombing Lebanon and murdering its people?

Hussein Ibish
Communications Director for the American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee