Fatima left behind her father, his thigh cut open by shrapnel, and her injured grandmother. As she ran into a nearby ravine with her sister, she heard the cries of neighbors trapped in other houses.

     "The village was full of "Israeli" soldiers, tanks, helicopters and destruction," said Mrs. Baghdadi, now 35.

Twenty years ago this week, "Israeli" troops rolled in force across the border into southern Lebanon for the first time, seeking security for "Israel's" northern towns and villages…

"Israel's" army has controlled parts of Lebanon ever since. But it has never found the security it sought.

The Israelis now hold a strip that makes up about 10 percent of Lebanon's territory. From 1978 until now, up to 25,000 people have been killed, most of them civilians, nearly 900 of them "Israeli" soldiers.

In the invasion on March 14, 1978, it took "Israel's" forces just five days to push north to the Litani River near Abbassieh, 16 miles north bf the "Israeli" border.

Israelis no longer occupy this town of several thousand with a bustling Friday street market. Farmers work surrounding fields, and the mosque that was leveled a generation ago has been rebuilt.

But for the survivors -- who say 133 of their neighbors or relatives were killed -- haunting memories remain.

Mrs. Baghdadi, her sister Rabab, their father Ali and grandmother Sakina are among the lucky survivors.

Fourteen of those killed were relatives of Nassrallah Koaik, a trucker.

"Some of the people who died in Abbassieh were fleeing from house to house, chased by strafing jets which cut them down," Koiak said.

Koaik is still not ready to forgive.

"lnshallah (God willing), "Israel" leaves Lebanon. But before it does, inshallah, it is destroyed," he said.

Sami Hallal, 57, said "Israeli" officers quickly realized that their air force had hit many civilians.
Zeino Fardoun, then Abbassieh's mayor, recalls asking the "Israeli" officers, "Why did you bombard the village?"

The Israelis responded that the village was full of "terrorists," said Fardoun, 81.

Of course, there weren't any," he said.

March 1978 began a new era for Abbassieh and many other villages nestled in the green rolling hills of predominantly Shiite Muslim southern Lebanon.

Within months of its March 14, 1978, invasion, however, the "Israeli" army pulled back under international pressure and was replaced by UN peacekeepers in some areas and "Israeli"-backed militias in others.

In 1982, the "Israeli" army returned in a massive invasion to drive out the PLO, slicing through central Lebanon into the capital, Beirut --at a cost of nearly 700 "Israeli" soldiers' lives.

The architect of that invasion, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, was forced to resign in 1983 when an "Israeli" inquiry blamed him for failing to prevent the slaughter of hundreds of Palestinians by Lebanese forces in refugee camps in Beirut.

It took three years for "Israel" to withdraw into its present "security zone" in southern Lebanon.
Enter the Shiite Muslim Lebanese guerrillas.

Today, fighters of Hizbullah attack "Israel's" occupying soldiers almost daily. And they occasionally lob rockets into northern "Israeli" towns that the 1978 invasion was intended to safeguard.