ABSTRACT
The village of Ayn Ebel in south Lebanon never integrally belonged to the broader geographic and ethnic surroundings. The core of the Maronite heartland in Mount Lebanon stretched from Bsharre in the north down to the area of Jezzine, thus isolating Ayn Ebel, situated still further south, from immediate contact with the vital religious-national Christian entity. At the same time, southern Lebanon was the home of an overwhelming Shiite majority population with no Maronite legislative representation from the Sidon, Nabatiyeh and Hasbayya areas and south of them. In the 1930s, the Shiites and Palestinian infiltrators, along with assorted marauding and terrorist Arab elements, dominated southern Lebanon in which the few Christian villages, such as Debel and Rmeish, Klay’a and Marj’ayoun, dwelled in precarious circumstances. It was therefore not without cause that the Maronites in these villages actually sought formal ties with Israel in 1948-49, even offering to serve in the Israel Defense Forces and perhaps be politically incorporated within the emerging map of the state of Israel in the course of the War of Independence.1 To live with the Jews in Upper Galilee seemed a better option than contending with the Shiites in Jabal ‘Amil.
