Can The Center Hold?

Hundreds of Hizballah supporters cruised the streets of central Beirut last week, honking their car horns and waving the militant Shi'ite Muslim group's yellow flag. The demonstration had a festive air, but it may have signaled the start of [an error occurred while processing this directive] something ominous: massive street protests threatened by Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to bring down Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's Western-backed government.

The government is already in crisis. Six pro-Syrian ministers quit last week after Siniora refused Hizballah's demand for a new government alloting the group and its allies one-third of the Cabinet posts, enough to give them effective veto power. Nasrallah wants to be able to block laws that could threaten Hizballah, such as a grant of increased powers to the expanding U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon. But beyond this, the government suspects Hizballah will try to further the interests of its Iranian and Syrian backers.

Far more is at stake than just another round of Lebanese political infighting. The U.S. supports Siniora's government as an example of a budding Arab democracy and as a useful counterweight to Syrian and Iranian regional ambitions. But an anti-Western alliance that includes Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas wants to roll back U.S. influence in the Middle East, using Lebanon as the pivot. "Lebanon will be the defeat point for Israel and America," Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei said last week.

The country is holding its collective breath to see whether the demonstrations will escalate. "In the mid-1970s we passed through a similar situation and the country's leaders took us to civil war," recalls Wassef Awada, columnist for the Beirut daily As-Safir. "Will the Lebanese commit suicide again?"