The gates of Kafr Tibnit stand wide open. Carloads of people moved freely through yesterday, entering and leaving the occupation zone Israel vacated.
This was the first time since 1982 that Lebanese citizens had free access to the south, the first time they did not have to ask the permission of Israel's client South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia.
The windows in the red and yellow guard house are broken.
At the checkpoint Lebanese army soldiers were sorting out the supplies the SLA abandoned when its soldiers fled on Monday.
There were ammunition boxes, piles of uniforms, furniture. Beyond the second gate lay rows of burnt-out cars belonging to people the SLA did not like and decided to punish.
Many migrants from the zone returned from visits to their parents and natal villages to find their cars destroyed or stolen. Yesterday, National Liberation Day cars braving the spectacular traffic jams were filled with young families and middle-aged people, the exiles who left either because of the warfare that raged about them since 1965 or because they could not make a living in the impoverished south.
These were the people the SLA closed out for 18 years.
The villages of the south, consequently, were populated chiefly by old people, shop-owners and farmers who could manage by planting their fields with tobacco and vegetables or by collaborating with the Israeli forces or even working in Israel.
But yesterday the hills of south Lebanon were filled with the music of children's laughter again and enterprising lads sold balloons to children stuck in the traffic jams.
Half the population of Bint Jbail in the central sector emigrated to the US, settling in and around Detroit, Michigan. Others emigrated to Canada and Africa.
Some have since returned home to build grand stone villas with red tile roofs.
Today the people of the south are counting on prosperous emigres to invest their money in businesses and manufacturing so the south can develop economically.
The people and government of Lebanon are determined that politics will not intrude again so that one part of the country - or another - could become alienated from the whole.
