MIDDLE EAST: Lebanon's former freedom fighters have failed to distance their party from acts of terror, writes Lynne O'Donnell, in Shebaa Village.
Photographs of Israeli soldiers beaten, bruised and humiliated grace the walls of Khaim Prison, once a notorious torture chamber on a remote hillside of southern Lebanon, now a museum glorifying Hizbullah, the militant Islamic movement that labours under the tag of terrorist.
Mounted alongside pictures of black-clad weeping widows, biographies of teen martyrs who blew themselves up, and Kalashnikov rifles used by fallen comrades to defend Lebanese sovereignty, the images of the three Israeli soldiers are a proud instalment in the history of Hizbullah.
In interviews, officials from the organisation - which has sought since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 to transform its image from freedom-fighting militia to grassroots political party aloof from the corrupting influence of mainstream power - make clear that the fate of the captured men is part and parcel of its ongoing struggle to rid Lebanese soil of its occupiers.
"Those Israeli soldiers were an occupying force, on Lebanese land. They were arrested in the midst of a battle between the resistance and the Israelis," said Mr Hassan Azzeddine, a member of Hizbullah's political council and the group's spokesman.
Sitting in his office on the third floor of a building in the working-class southern Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik, smoking Gitanes and doodling on a pad while waiting for pauses in the translation, Mr Azzeddine makes clear that Hizbullah remains in the business of armed resistance.
"As long as there is a permanent, continuous Israeli threat and occupation, and as long as Lebanese people feel the necessity for resistance to defend them, that means we will continue until we achieve our goals," he said.
To many observers of the movement, this sort of rhetoric is a hangover from the high point of Hizbullah's history as a force that successfully forced Israel to quit Lebanon, making it "the only group that ever made Israel give up Arab land by force", said Ms Judith Harik, a professor at the American University of Beirut, whose book, Hizbullah: The Changing Face of Terrorism, is due out in September.
As a result, she said, among ordinary people in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world, "they're idols".
To capitalise on its reputation, Hizbullah leaders seek support as politicians who deliver results to a mostly impoverished electorate.
However, they have failed to distance the organisation from acts of terror, like kidnapping.
As President Bush intensifies his campaign against anti-Israel groups classified as terrorist organisations, recently calling on European Union members to ban the militant Palestinian Hamas, pressure on Hizbullah is also rising.
It stands accused by the US government of operating cells in Europe, Africa, Latin America and North America; of smuggling arms to the Palestinian Authority; and of involvement in a range of terrorist attacks worldwide during the 1990s, including recruiting Singaporeans to attack American and Israeli ships in the Singapore Straits.
A series of attacks, kidnappings, suicide bombings and hijackings stretching back to the 1980s has been laid at Hizbullah's door.
Mr Azzeddine naturally rebuts the description of Hizbullah as a terrorist group.
But experts, too, like Dr Harik, say there is no actual evidence linking the organisation to unlawful acts against civilians that could be fairly described as terrorist attacks.
Rather, she said, "they have an unimpeachable reputation" in Lebanon, built on an extensive social services infrastructure of schools, universities, research foundations, hospitals, clinics, shelters and assistance with post-war reconstruction.
It was these activities that propelled Hizbullah into parliament and which have secured the group its image as a party of the poor.
This image appears to have been adopted even by the mainstream American press, which in recent months has published reports on its good deeds.
But as outside pressure mounts on the group, few Lebanese who do not directly benefit from Hizbullah's largesse appear to sympathise with its cause.
"Hizbullah is respected, but if it didn't dispense patronage and services, I wonder how popular they'd be," said Michael Young, a columnist with The Daily Star.
"The myth that Hizbullah likes to perpetuate, that inside every Lebanese breast there beats the heart of a resistance fighter, is nonsense."
Today, Hizbullah's fight centres on an arid sliver of land on the southern border which Israel holds as a buffer zone between Hizbullah territory and its populated northern regions. The sovereignty, Lebanese or Syrian, of the 10 sq km known as Shebaa Farms, is not clear.
Barely visible from the nearby road and watched over by a United Nations monitoring post manned around the clock by blue-turbaned Indians, the area is ringed by a crude barbed-wire fence, near which, in October 2000, the three Israelis soldiers were snatched.
Mr Azzeddine groups Shebaa Farms with the Golan Heights, Syrian territory occupied by Israel, to justify the ongoing struggle. The link provides Syria with justification for remaining in Lebanon, and gives Hizbullah a reason to maintain its armed wing.
One Hizbullah supporter visiting Khaim Prison on a recent sunny afternoon said: "If they were to give up their arms, Israel would be here within two minutes.
"Israel wants to attack Lebanon again. If we lose Hizbullah power, we will lose Lebanese power."
But for many Lebanese people, the war is over.
"It's time to forget about that and get on with making the economy work and create jobs," said one young Beirut woman.
"The Shebaa Farms issue is an anecdote," said Mr Joseph Batour, a political analyst at Beirut's St Joseph's University.
"Today there is no justification for resistance over a few hundred square metres of land. People say 'I don't care about Shebaa Farms'. So Hizbullah is seeing its strategic value depleted and degraded."