At the foot of the old carob tree on the small square in front of St. Joseph Church in Kfarwa, Ibrahim Bechar was smoking a hookah with two friends. Fouad Younès, a displaced Syrian, was chatting with them. The sound of Israeli bombing raining down on the Lebanese Christian village of Nabatiyé 12 kilometers to the south, on Wednesday, October 16, regularly roused the village from its torpor.

"I'm a stubborn man," said the old grocer, teasingly, before jumping out of his chair to greet a customer entering his sparsely stocked shop. On October 14, the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of Kfarwa. The village, overlooking the Zahrani River between Saida and Nabatieh, is more than 40 kilometers away from the demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon.

The stone houses, flowered with fuchsia bougainvillea and surrounded by pomegranate and guava trees, have been left to the protection of the saints, whose icons guard the doorsteps. The 300 residents who once lived in Kfarwa have moved to Beirut and Mount Lebanon. Most of them are farmers who can no longer access their olive groves, or civil servants who can no longer work in Nabatieh, which has been pounded by bombardments.

Some 30 men, determined to stay, have improvised. They have taken on the role of lookouts to dissuade thieves and Hezbollah fighters who might be tempted to enter the village to launch rockets at Israel. "We're not afraid of being bombed, because there are no military targets in the village. We are protected by Saint Joseph. We are against this war that Hezbollah has dragged us into, but there's nothing we can do. It's a state within a state that takes its orders from Iran," said a man in his 50s, around whom the village's young people are organized.

Some wear black T-shirts and fatigues. In this village, where the majority support the Lebanese Forces, a party of the Christian right, everyone has a grandfather or father who fought in the Christian Phalanges during the civil war (1975-1990). Some were killed by the Palestinian fedayeen. "We're not a police force or an army. There's no need to create militias; the Lebanese army protects us. We monitor comings and goings on the roads leading to the village. At the start of the war, they entered the village because they needed to use the road to reach their positions," said the 50-something.

Kfarwa is "surrounded by Shiite villages," with whom "relations are good," added the man. But since the Israeli army launched a massive bombing campaign in southern Lebanon on September 23, the valley in which the Zahrani River flows has been bombed more than 40 times. "We think there are Hezbollah positions, missile launchers and ammunition stockpiles," he said.

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