What Next, Lebanon?

Anger in the Air

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There was a contentious two-hour television show last Wednesday on LBC television, a channel aligned with a Christian Lebanese party. On "Talk of the People," youths of various factions squared off over the war.

Ali al-Ghoul, a guest on the show, said that to him, Iran and Israel were the same, that loyalty to Iran was the same as loyalty to Israel.

Another guest, Osama Wehbeh, weighed in. "Who is going to win, Lebanon, Hezbollah or Iran?"

A third, Georges Jreij, then raised his voice. He contended Israel was long planning this war, even before its two soldiers were captured by Hezbollah in a cross-border raid, echoing the charges Nasrallah has made. "Why should we allow Israel to destroy Lebanon without having anything to negotiate with?" he asked. "Has surrendering become the rule and resistance the odd thing to do?"

The show offered a glimpse of how the talk in the streets of Lebanon is often far more angry than the words of the political elite.

"From what I see around me, I think there's a 90 percent chance of a civil war," said Faten Dimasi, a 29-year-old who works at a jewelry store in Sidon. "There are going to be problems between Sunnis and Shiites."

Lebanon's politics are often oversimplistically broken down by its religious sects. They do create the outlines of public opinion, and the leaders themselves sometimes command blind loyalty. But within each grouping, there is still a great deal of diversity that transcends religious loyalties. On the LBC show, the guests' opinions sometimes ran counter to their religious affiliations.

Followers of Christian leader Michel Aoun have been some of the most active in providing aid to displaced Shiite Muslims, coordinating with Hezbollah's own relief efforts. Across the country, nonsectarian grass-roots groups have mobilized to provide help in shows of national unity.

In cities such as Sidon, Sunni clerics have urged a jihad, or holy war, that goes beyond Hezbollah in confronting Israel, and recoil at what they see as the overly close ties of the community's leadership to the United States. "Fighting is the natural state of relations with the Zionist enemy until it is wiped out," declares a banner in a Sunni neighborhood in Sidon. There, one of the most radical of the Sunni groups, often at odds with Hezbollah, has deployed 500 activists to help resettle 8,000 displaced Shiites.

But the infusion of tens of thousands of dislocated people, sometimes crowding the streets, has frayed social ties in neighborhoods that have become less and less diverse since the civil war ended. Streets often form borders. Many grumble over their newly arrived neighbors. Others worry that a streetfight could become something more, or that Hezbollah might seek to base its armaments in their neighborhoods.

"When you have guests staying over one week, it's fine; two weeks, it's fine as well. But if it goes on longer, then there are going to be some problems, I think," said Mira Ghandour, 42, a marketing executive in the Christian quarter of Ashrafiyeh.

Other Lebanese say they don't trust themselves.