BEIRUT — With one hand firmly on her squirming toddler, Heba al Ali joined hundreds of Shiite Muslims last week for the funeral procession of two Hezbollah militants killed in vicious sectarian battles that pushed Lebanon to the brink of civil war.
Hezbollah guards in camouflage uniforms had passed, carrying two yellow-draped coffins affixed with portraits of the slain fighters. One had a baby face and wispy facial hair that gave him the look of an unlikely guerrilla; the other appeared just as young but offered a cool, serious pose.
At 28, al Ali is old enough to remember the final days of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. Yet even with this tiny nation’s religious and sectarian divisions so rigidly entrenched, she never really thought that her three children would have to hear explosions, see premature burials of Lebanon’s youths or feel the same kind of heartache all brought on as warring factions once again tear apart a land with so much promise.
“My first thought was to flee, but to where?” al Ali said, recalling her reaction when the latest violence erupted May 7. “My next thought was, ‘I never should have had children.’ What is their future?”
The Lebanese Cabinet on Wednesday rescinded two controversial orders that had provoked Hezbollah and its allies into taking over much of Beirut through lopsided gun battles against less organized pro-government Sunni gunmen. The reversal of the orders is expected to end this current spasm of violence, though the move doesn’t resolve the underlying 18-month power struggle between the U.S.-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition movement supported by Iran and Syria.
Although leaders of the disparate groups are busy figuring out how to translate the latest upheaval into political capital, ordinary Lebanese of all backgrounds said they wouldn’t soon forget the savagery of the past week. They also fear that the balance of power has been altered so dramatically that it’s a question of when, and not if, fighting resumes.
And in Lebanon and throughout the Arab world, Sunnis were appalled that the Shiite army they praised as heroes for fighting Israel to a draw two years ago was now aiming its weapons at Sunni neighborhoods.
