Lebanon's Shiites Grapple With New Feeling of Power

He shook his head, more resigned than angry. "This wasn't built for us."

Yassine walked past campsites. "No to the pourers of tea," slogans read on the sides of tents, a reference to Lebanese police who served tea to Israeli soldiers this summer as they occupied the southern town of Marjayoun.

He read them, then furrowed his brow. For the first time, his voice took on an edge.

"If I'm a man, 60 years old, I've fought 25 years, 30 years, until now for one aim, to expel the Israelis and to keep the Americans away. I've lost a lot of things -- my father, my brother, my good life, and I sit at my home watching the Israelis get in peace what they couldn't get in war? Watching, just watching. Put yourself in the same situation. You would feel angry."

In a way, the protests today are a microcosm of the currents swirling through the Shiite community, promoted by Hezbollah with its intuitive feel for the sentiments of its rank and file. They are the equivalent of a new kind of politics in Lebanon, drawing on the street, roiled by populist demands: a protest over government corruption, a denunciation of the United States and Israel, a celebration of the war this summer, tinted with a sense of betrayal at the hands of other Lebanese, and a call for change, however ill-defined it might be.

To Yassine, it is a world view that rarely, if ever, intersects with that offered by the government's supporters; it pits righteousness against wrong, and victory, however long it might take, is inevitable. He said he couldn't envision an alternative.

"From the beginning we weren't treated well. Not just now. From the previous government and the government before that," Yassine said. "The people aren't going here because what Sayyid Hasan said. Sure, they'll do what he says. They love him. But they're going here because they're unhappy. I'll go not one night, two nights or three nights. I'll go for a year or two years."

As the protests wound down, he got into his car, driving back to the Dahiya and its densely populated warrens, where electricity is cut for hours every day. Armored personnel carriers were parked every so often, and knots of soldiers hung around intersections along streets that divided Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods. "It's like a border," he said. Along one road, six armored personnel carriers drove by, followed by three jeeps. A little ways down, he was stopped briefly at a checkpoint.

"Where are you coming from?" the soldier asked. "Downtown," he said, and drove on.

His mood turned a little bleak, a little less optimistic than at the protests.

"They can't let any fight get big," Yassine said. "If a small fight gets big, Lebanon is gone."