Word: druzes
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...neighboring Christian village of Suq al Gharb, motorists suffer similar perils. At one intersection a sign warns passersby: DANGER. SNIPERS. STAY TO THE RIGHT. The sign is obsolete; even the right side of the road is hazardous now. Druze fighters in Aytat are constantly finding new fields of fire. "As soon as you think you know where it is safe to walk, they find another way to shoot at you," complains Munira Nassar, a housewife. One of her neighbors was wounded while hanging out laundry from a kitchen window...
...Lebanon's endless litany of sectarian violence, no feud has proved more bitter than that between Christians and Druze. The primary battlefield in their long-running confrontation is the Chouf, where both groups sought refuge from Sunni Muslim persecutors 1,000 years ago. Before Lebanon deteriorated into outright civil war in 1975, Aytat and Suq al Gharb lived in peace as summer resorts. Wealthy Arabs were drawn to the towns' cool mountain air scented by thick stands of parasol pines. Since the fighting resumed in earnest last October, the villages have become ghost towns. Gardens are overgrown, grape...
...fighting flared and subsided repeatedly through the winter and spring, the Israelis prevented either side from rearming or taking new ground. The Druze surrounded Suq al Gharb on three sides, but the Christians controlled the only road between Aytat and Aley, the largest Druze-held town, which in turn was encircled by Christians. After the Druze overran the Christian town of Bhamdun last week, the Lebanese army moved in to protect Suq al Gharb. The army has braved steady artillery fire all week long in order to block a Druze advance toward Beirut's southern suburbs...
...merely defending their homes and that the enemy is the aggressor. Both insist that there is nothing religious about their fight but that the other side is intent on imposing its will on the whole of Lebanon. The Christian Phalangists came to the Chouf under Israeli army protection; the Druze operate from secure bases behind Syrian lines. Nonetheless, each side blames the other for drawing foreign powers into the conflict...
...Verdun-like trenches that divide the two villages, young men who used to play together now exchange obscenities across a narrow no man's land. Walid, a Druze fighter in Aytat, must crawl through a series of trenches to reach his home, from which he takes potshots at Suq al Gharb out of a carefully sandbagged upper-story window. Walid says of his six-year-old daughter, who has neatly twined pigtails and the only clean clothes in the house: "I will teach her to hate the Phalangists and how to kill them." Oscar, a Phalangist commander...