BEIRUT - The Lebanese Shiite community, haunted by Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon and suspicious of US motives in the region, has drawn strength from the Lebanese-Syrian alliance that Washington now wants to see dissolved.
Lebanon's Shia Muslims, who make up slightly more than 30 percent of the population, hail efforts by Syria they say have brought social peace to Lebanon, restored the stature of the state and the army and enabled them to share political power after decades of exclusion.
Responding to a call by the Syrian-backed Shiite movement Hezbollah, hundreds of thousands of people rallied here on Tuesday to voice their gratitude to Damascus, which has had troops stationed in Lebanon since 1976.
The huge demonstration overshadowed recent gatherings by other Lebanese parties who have chafed under the Syrian presence and who -- with the backing of the United States and France -- are calling for the full withdrawal of Syrian military and political forces.
Yet apart from Tuesday's rally, there are few visible displays of support for Syria in southern Beirut's crowded Shiite suburbs.
"We have nothing against the presence of the Syrians in Lebanon -- our problem is Israel," said 23-year-old Hussein Faqih, whose family fled an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1978.
Israel's occupation of the region only came to an end in 2000 under pressure from Hezbollah's military wing.
Faqih, a salesman in an electronics shop in the Borj Barajneh district, said he had joined Tuesday's demonstration "to support the resistance, because it defended our territory," adding that "the resistance will not weaken with a Syrian withdrawal."
"We don't want foreign intervention and we don't trust US policies. It's neither for the United Nations nor (US President George W.) Bush to say what is good for us. Let us determine our fate ourselves."
Faqih has hung a Lebanese flag outside his shop rather than partisan symbols of solidarity.
"Our privileged relations with Damascus will not end with the departure of the last Syrian soldier" from Lebanese territory, he asserted.
He was interrupted by a 30-year-old doctor who said "the Lebanese respect those who help them."
"We Lebanese must be grateful to Syria for the sacrifices its army has made in this country."
The doctor, who declined to give his name, insisted that "our decision must be Lebanese and it is up to us to come to an agreement on the true sovereignty and independence of our country."
"That's our answer to 1559," he said, referring to a United Nations resolution calling for Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon.
Oum Mohammed Faour, a 50-year-old mother, said she had painful memories of the country's years of civil war -- 1975-1990 -- and occupation.
"Those who didn't live through the war know nothing. We suffered in the war and saw these people coming in on Israeli tanks," she recalled, referring to the actions of pro-Israeli militia groups during the occupation.
Abu Ali Younes, now in his eighties and from the village of Markaba near the Lebanese-Syrian border, acknowledges "the mistakes made by Syria in Lebanon."
"But that doesn't mean we must renounce our strategic alliance with Syria. That's why I am not part of the opposition and also because it doesn't clearly reject 1559."
A retired airport employee, Abu Ali was held from 1987 to 1990 in an Israeli prison in Khyam in southern Lebanon. One of his sons was killed in the resistance while another was imprisoned in Israel for a year.
He credits Hezbollah with having brought "calm and peace to southern Lebanon, where Christians and Muslims live in harmony."
"If the Americans land in Lebanon, God forbid, what happened in Iraq will happen here -- chaos and insurrection," he warned.
03/10/2005 12:23 GMT