What Next, Lebanon?

"This is the way we are. This is our nature," Dimasi said. "If we don't find someone else to fight, we'll end up fighting ourselves. If we don't have any troubles, then we'll find them."

On the television show "Talk of the People," the troubles raged Wednesday night.

At one point, Luana Saghieh asked what Israel had lost in all this.

"We are the one who were taken 20 years back," she said. "I don't care. I will make peace with the devil for the sake of Lebanon," she added.

Guests lashed out at her. One said she cared only about her " bronzage ," French for suntan that has become colloquial here.

In time, the arguments became so heated that producers had to act.

They shut off microphones of all but the one speaking.

'From the People'

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Ghassan Farran, a 49-year-old doctor, stood on top of the rubble that was once his house in the southern city of Tyre.

He lived in a building that was pulverized Wednesday by four Israeli missiles. One apartment was believed to be the rarely used office of Nabil Kaouk, a Hezbollah leader in southern Lebanon. The blasts, in a densely built quarter of the downtown, chiseled a circle of destruction around neighboring residences. Rubble was piled up on still-intact balconies like discarded furniture. Nearby were the photo albums of Farran, who had already moved his wife, two sons and two daughters a block away.

He grabbed the pictures, flipping through them one by one. In all, hundreds of his photos had burned, his most painful loss.

"All the dreams, me and my children," he said. "This is the gift of America."

He didn't deny that Hezbollah kept an office there, but grew angry over the 16 civilians hurt.

"Is this terrorism?" he asked, gesturing at the remnants of his house. "I am a terrorist?" he asked, pointing to himself. "Every place in southern Lebanon has a Hezbollah office. Hezbollah comes from the people, not from Syria or Iran or someplace else. If they want to destroy Hezbollah, they're going to have to destroy all of Lebanon, all of it."

Farran is Shiite, but a leftist, his secular politics far from Hezbollah's amalgam of Shiite narrative, religious revivalism and Arab nationalism. In an interview the next day, he said he felt alone, stranded in this war and what might follow.

"What choice do I have? Fighting Israel or leaving Lebanon. I can't leave Lebanon. I have to stay here, and if I stay, I need someone to protect me," he said, dragging on a cigarette. "Hezbollah is the only military force that can protect me."

But protection, he acknowledged, didn't go both ways. "The Lebanese community is divided. Here are two opposite opinions of Lebanon in the future. Everyone knows that. What I hope is that the Lebanese citizens will not kill each other after the war. That's what I hope."

He paused for a long moment, considering the possibility of that civil war.

"I hope not," he said finally. "But, yes, I worry."

Special correspondents Alia Ibrahim and Lynn Maalouf in Beirut contributed to this report.