KFAR ROUMMANE, Lebanon — These are happy days for the militant Islamic guerrilla movement Hezbollah, which has spearheaded the fight against Israeli forces from places like this picturesque village in southern Lebanon, with its cedar-shaded streets and olive groves stretching invitingly along the hillsides.
Two fortified military positions, one belonging to the Israel Defense Forces and one to its militia proxy, the South Lebanon Army, loom over the bucolic setting. But the residents below, many of whose homes bear scars from the fighting, say the enemy's proximity no longer seems quite so forbidding.
"It is the Israelis who are afraid now," Amal Saieh exults. The town's petite English teacher is planning to do the traditional folk dance known as the dabke on that historic day, coming soon, when the Israelis finally withdraw from southern Lebanon after 22 years.
Ask Saieh whom she credits for the withdrawal, and the answer comes quickly: "Hezbollah. Here the people love Hezbollah because they are the ones doing the fighting, and they help us in so many ways."
It has been a strange transformation for an Iranian-backed group with about 2,000 fighters and perhaps 10 times that number of party members.
In the eyes of many Lebanese, Hezbollah has gone from being a foreign, fanatical menace that blackened the country's image with its bombings, assassinations and kidnappings to a mainstream, indigenous, political-humanitarian organization, one whose steadfastness has restored wounded Lebanese and Arab national pride.
Not only has Hezbollah gained what it regards as a military victory in its war of attrition against Israel, but Hezbollah claims to be riding high in the polls and set to expand its presence in the Lebanese parliament in a few months.
Even its media are doing well. Hezbollah's television station, Al Manar (The Lighthouse), is rapidly becoming one of the most watched in Lebanon and is preparing for worldwide telecasts via satellite from new $15-million marbled headquarters tucked into the slums of south Beirut. The group also has two radio stations.
Sheik Naim Kassem, co-founder of Hezbollah and its deputy secretary-general, doesn't rule out the idea that the group, whose name means Party of God, might one day be the most powerful in the country. "Isn't that what any party would want?" he asked during an interview.
