Lebanese snipers yesterday exacted a final humiliation on Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon, triggering a firefight above columns of refugees at the border, and announcing the enemy's arrival on its doorstep.
Yesterday's clash, which raged for more than an hour, while refugees cowered behind cars or paltry pieces of luggage, encapsulated Israel's worst nightmare. After two decades and the loss, according to estimates, of more than 1,000 men, Israel's chaotic withdrawal from southern Lebanon leaves its northern flank dangerously exposed, with Hizbullah guerrillas sitting directly on its border.
With the fighters of its proxy militia, the South Lebanese Army (SLA) fleeing headlong with their families to crossings all along the border, the scale of the Israeli fiasco was beginning to unfold yesterday.
At the Fatima Gate crossing, where men, women and children waited behind a barbed wire fence for five hours in the sun to be cleared for entry by two Israeli security officials, the refugees called out the names of their villages - Khiam, El Qlaia, Kheube. It was a rollcall of defeat that yesterday spread eastwards with astonishing speed across the self-declared security zone. Hizbullah now controls at least two-thirds of the area.
Along with Israel's evacuation of Bint Jubayl, the second largest town in the zone, at least a dozen more villages passed into the hands of Hizbullah yesterday.
Most fell without a shot. After the Israelis pulled out of Bint Jubayl in the middle of the night, their SLA allies, already in a state of collapse in the centre of the strip, simply gave up. Branded collaborators, they and their families headed for exile.
Behind them, they left tanks and other heavy equipment donated by their patrons. The equipment was bombed later yesterday by the Israeli airforce in an attempt to stop Hizbullah in its tracks.
At Fatima Gate, the trail of abandoned cars stretched for more than a mile into Lebanon. Most still had the keys in the ignition. "We left our houses behind. What is the use of a car," said Amelia Moussa, a psychology student. "I lived my whole life in Lebanon - 21 years - and I want to stay. But we can not live in peace and so I am leaving."
At the nearby Maronite Christian village of Raymesh, the entire population of 12,000 fled. Yesterday morning, they arrived by the busload at the Biranit border crossing, and were immediately driven to the resort on the Sea of Galilee which is the main transit camp for a refugee influx that has already reached thousands.
Marwan Makhoul, the nephew of an SLA officer, banged on the side of a bus as it sped past. For days, he had been in constant communication with his family in south Lebanon via Israeli cellphones.
"Last night, he said they would all stay until the end - that they will die there," Makhoul said. "But in the morning, after the Israelis left and Hizbullah arrived and started pulling people out of their houses, they knew they had to go."
According to Israeli military officials, the SLA is still in control of eight posts inside the security zone - although it has fled a further 25. Israel claims to control a further eight posts, including its headquarters at Marjayoun.
However, with refugees arriving from neighbouring villages, the claims seemed less than convincing. Among the most spectacular territories to change hands yesterday was the notorious Khiam prison - the Bastille of south Lebanon - whose 144 prisoners had been regularly tortured, and jailed for years without access to lawyers.
As events galloped beyond Israel's control, the prime minister, Ehud Barak, yesterday tried to reassure a public that is angrily questioning his decision to go ahead with a unilateral withdrawal.
Many northern Israelis employ relatives of SLA men in their hotels and orchards.
Yesterday they descended on Fatima Gate to see whether their employees had managed to flee, and to shake their heads in dismay at the unruly scenes. "It is like a picture of a ghetto," said a farmer Shlomo Hayun, who lives on Shaar Yeshuv farm. "This is the first time I have been ashamed to be Israeli. This is chaotic and disorganised."
Elsewhere, at least half of the residents of the largest town, Kiryat Shmona, drove south rather than spend another night cowering in the bomb shelters.
Mr Barak had badly wanted an orderly withdrawal with an expanded United Nations peacekeeping force taking control of border areas. But with the SLA in disarray, a refugee influx that has taken the government by surprise and the rapid arrival of Hizbullah well before Israel has had time to complete its electrified border fence and other defences, that prospect has evaporated.
"When we solve the problem from its roots - the withdrawal of the army from Lebanon will take a few days, maybe a week or maybe 10 days - we should not be alarmed," Mr Barak told Israel's armed forces radio.
Last night it appeared that the end could arrive within hours, rather than days. Amid the thud of a distant artillery barrage, a convoy of tanks lined up at the Egel Pass bor der crossing near Metulla, waiting for orders to go into Lebanon, possibly to cover the withdrawal of the last Israeli soldiers.
In the largest pullout so far, 200 troops from Bint Jubayl reached the Tzurit base yesterday morning, standing atop tanks to offer prayers of thanksgiving. Behind them, tanks and armoured personnel carriers were being loaded on to flatbed trucks.
The soldiers said they got their marching orders at noon on Monday - predating the disintegration of the SLA. But the end still came swiftly, with the quartermaster handing out free chocolates from the stores rather than hand them over to Hizbullah.
"It was a mess," said a tank mechanic Nir Sopher, sitting beside the road with his duffel bag and reading a paperback copy of the The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
But it is a mess from which Israel will not easily be able to extricate itself. Like several of the outposts to which Israel has now withdrawn, Tzurit still lives several yards inside Lebanese territory, giving Hizbullah a future pretext to attack.