More than any other village in the formerly occupied zone, Qlaya had reasons to worry about the departure of the Israeli army. Qlaya residents were among the first to turn for weapons to their Israeli neighbors, just three miles south, when their village was threatened by Palestinian warlords in 1976. Israel needed to stop the Palestinians, who had turned the rocky hills of southern Lebanon into their personal fiefdom, from launching cross-border attacks on Israeli civilians. That both Maronite Christians and Israeli Jews perceived themselves as embattled Western-looking minorities in a mostly Muslim Middle East helped seal their relationship.

 Qlaya stood by its allies when Israel first invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982, the two fought hand in hand. In 1985, several war chapters later, Israel pulled out of most of Lebanon but kept 1,500 Israeli soldiers in a buffer zone at the southern edge of the country. 

The enemy changed from Palestinian terrorists to Hezbollah guerrillas. Israel recruited all the fighting-age Lebanese men it could coerce and hire to act as "human sand-bags" along its northern border and the SLA became a multi-religious force: 70% of the SLA's 2,500 men were Muslim Shiite and Druze--like the occupied zone itself. But Qlaya's men remained Israel's staunchest allies and filled the top ranks of security and military intelligence outfits under Israeli orders.