Lebanese Shi'ites welcomed Israel's 1982 invasion--at first

[eridani]

Sick of bringing up the rear behind the Christians, Druze and Sunni, and impoverished by the presence of Palestinian refugees, they were ready for a change. It took a further four years for the Shi'ite opposition to turn into Hezbollah.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0327/p13s01-woiq.html

Israel believed the Shiites of south Lebanon would be happy to see the back of Palestinian guerrillas whose presence had made life intolerable. Indeed, the Lebanese Shiites initially showered the invading Israeli troops with rose petals and rice. But the Israelis miscalculated about the Shiites, and the rice and rose petals soon turned into bombs and bullets.

"Beware the Shiites!" wrote Israeli journalist and peace activist Uri Avnery recently, predicting that US problems in Iraq will begin once the fighting is over. He gave an example of two trips he paid to south Lebanon in 1982. During the first visit, four days after the Israeli invasion, he recounted being greeted with "great" joy by Shiite villagers. A few months later, Mr. Avnery returned to Lebanon and found Israeli troops "now wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, many on the verge of panic. "What had happened? The Shiites received the Israeli soldiers as liberators. When they realized that they had come to stay as occupiers, they started to kill them," he wrote.