All Along the Blue Line

Rolling down the ridge line of the Lebanese hill town of Marjayoun in an armored personnel carrier towards the border with Israel, geography and history fly by fast.

Beaufort castle rises on the right above the cliffs of the Litani river. The French crusader fortress was abandoned centuries ago, and now many of the strategic promontories in this rocky stretch of country are occupied by observation posts and bases belonging to a friendlier bunch of foreigners. The 10,000 soldiers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (or UNIFIL), are multinational army of Indians, Malays, Chinese, Spanish, Finns, Irish, Italians, and even some new Frenchmen.

From this spot it's easy to see why the UN is here. On our left, a valley runs straight down into the northern Galilee. In times of war, it becomes a kind of Merkava highway for Israeli tanks to enter Lebanon. Above the valley is the town of Khiam, a Hizballah bastion from which the Islamic resistance group launched missiles into Israel.

We are out on patrol with the Spanish UNIFIL contingent, which has overall command of this part of southern Lebanon, Sector East, roughly the area wedged in between the Litani, Mount Hermon and the Blue Line, the disputed border between Israel and Lebanon.

It's a beautiful but dangerous place, so Spain has sent some of its best solders. The Spanish Legion has a reputation for mischief and unusual grooming: the men often grow out their goatees in imitation of their mascot, Fonsi the Ram. "He attacks the commanders because we cannot," said his handler. But they also have some serious responsibilities, including clearing about half-million unexploded bombs -- many of them Israeli cluster munitions -- leftover from the summer war. Even more importantly, they are here to discourage any armed group other than the Lebanese army from operating in the area. That means both Hizballah and the Israeli military.

Our patrol with the Spanish is largely uneventful except for a rare encounter with the Israeli Defense Forces at Fatima Gate, the tense and now completely closed checkpoint between Lebanon and Israel. Upon hearing that TIME is in town, what looks like an IDF work party takes a break for a photo opportunity. "I'm from Omaha, Nebraska!" one of them shouts in a accent as flat as as the Great Plains, and both of us look at each other from across No Man's Land as if to say, "Buddy, what are you doing here?"

There's a chance that he and the rest of the IDF might be back in Lebanon again soon. Hizballah openly admits it has rearmed since the ceasefire in August. The presence of UNFIL in the south has limited Hizballah's freedom of action, but not completely.

On our way back to the Spanish base, we pass by Khiam, but the Spanish UNIFIL soldiers are not welcome in there, and we do not enter. Later, photographer Pasqual Gorriz and I return to Khiam on our own, and the town's deputy mayor tells us that the Spanish soldiers who arrived in September went beyond just monitoring the area for violations of the cease-fire. They searched houses, and took photographs of homes and cars belonging to members of Hizballah. "They are spying for Israel," he says.

Clearly something happened between Hizballah and the Spanish that has UNIFIL backing down, at least for now. It's not hard to see why. The Resistance, as Hizballah is known here, was so strong in Khiam that they held out against the Israeli invasion for all 34 days of the summer war, despite a heavy bombardment that leveled much of the town, killed four UN observers, and ironically destroyed a prison that the Israelis had built during their occupation of Lebanon, which ended in 2000. "Foreigners think of Hizballah as some outside group like the Taliban," the deputy mayor says. "But this is our home, we are all Resistance here."

--Text and photos by Andrew Lee Butters/Marjayoun