Sensenig, a 50-year-old county native, is a professor of political science at Notre Dame University in Beirut, where Hezbollah forces and the Israeli army have been fighting for nearly two weeks.

He and his wife, Dima Dabbous-Sensenig, who is Lebanese, loaded their silver Toyota Corolla with supplies —including 16 gallons of gasoline for the generator, in case the power goes out, and for the cars, in case the stations close.

“A bomb landed about 500 yards from the parking lot where we were loading our groceries,” Sensenig said.

“I said to my wife, ‘Get in the car; let’s get out of here; if there is one bomb, there could be two.”

The couple plan to ride out the crisis at the family’s summer house in Bhamdoun, a popular tourist haven, and stay away from their downtown apartment.

“For me, this is very shocking,” Sensenig said.

So far, the fighting has killed 381 people in Lebanon and 36 people in Israel, according to The Associated Press.

Also, an estimated 600,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced, according to the World Health Organization.

The fighting erupted July 12 after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid.

Since then, Israeli jets have pounded Hezbollah targets in Beirut and southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has launched rocket attacks on northern Israel.

On Saturday, Israel sent ground troops and tanks into parts of southern Lebanon.

Sensenig is not sure what ground fighting will mean for civilians. He, along with the rest of the country, will wait it out.

His wife and her family are there to guide him.

She and her family, who are Sunni Muslims, know the pain of violence well. They survived at least 15 years of civil war that ended in Lebanon in the early 1990s.

“Because my wife and in-laws don’t find it exceptionally surprising, I’m sort of going with the flow,” he said.

He has no plans to evacuate.

“I have a very strong responsibility to my university and my students. As soon as school starts again, I want to be here,” he said.

The past conflict laid the ground work for the unrest today.

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 after members of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon attacked northern Israel.

A group of Shia clerics formed a group of fighters, Hezbollah, to force Israeli troops from the south of Lebanon. The troops finally left Lebanon’s southern end in 2000, according to published reports.

The Lebanese Army, which is limited in power, is not involved in the current fighting, according to published reports. It’s taking place, Sensenig says, between “Zionists and Hezbollah.”

“These two extreme positions are equally problematic,” Sensenig says. “Most of the Lebanese population is a third party in this war.”

The country’s population is more than half Muslim, both Sunni and Shia, with a mix that includes Christians.

Sensenig himself was raised a Lancaster County Mennonite. His parents, Richard and Lois, live in Lititz.

They, by the way, are worried about their son but manage to maintain a sense of peace. His mom says she is “trusting my God to work in my son’s life to protect him.”

Eugene Sensenig graduated from Warwick High School in 1974 and attended Franklin & Marshall College and Goshen College before heading to Salzburg, Austria, to study German.

He loved it and decided to stay and continue his studies, earning his doctorate in political science.

Years later he met Dima, and the couple moved to Beirut about seven years ago. Dabbous-Sensenig teaches at the Lebanese American University.

Both were planning to teach at their summer sessions a week ago Thursday.

Sensenig had scheduled the class mid-term exam that day — a test on the Reformation in Europe and the late Renaissance.

They drove toward the schools and the roads were empty.

What was frightening was the silence, he says. “It was the absence of bustling traffic, the absence of students milling around.”

A day later, the bombing increased, “and that’s when we realized that this is getting very serious.”

Now from the safety of the mountain home, the couple see the bombs exploding all over Beirut.

“The oil tanks burning at the airport light up the night,” he said.

The Israeli Air Force has destroyed the bridges, including the one that carries travelers from Lebanon to Damascus. He compared its significance to that of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge for Americans.

Despite the destruction, Sensenig is OK.

“I’m not going to paint myself as a hero here because I’m not suffering,” he said.

His concern turns to the thousands who have fled or are trying to leave.

Some of his wife’s relatives are among the throngs who are being told to stand at the docks in Beirut for 12 hours before they board a ship to safety.

“They take them to Cyprus, unload them and say, ‘fend for yourselves.’ There is no plan. This is a manmade (Hurricane) Katrina,” he said.