Hezbollah’s Actions Ignite Sectarian Fuse in Lebanon

The NYT notices that things under terrorist control are not the greatest? That the terrorists are inclined to attack first and then 'negotiate' from a position of power. Kind of like the Nazis and the Poles.

Nah, they are too clueless to notice that. This must be from an outsider.

Hezbollah’s Actions Ignite Sectarian Fuse in Lebanon - New York Times: "By that time Mr. Obaid, a Sunni Muslim, had gained a whole new way of seeing his Shiite countrymen and his native land.

“We cannot go back to how we lived with them before,” he said as he sat with relatives and friends at home here. “The blood is boiling here. Every boy here, his blood is boiling. They push us, they push us, they push us.”

Those feelings are being echoed throughout Lebanon. After almost a week of street battles that left scores dead and threatened to push the country into open war, long-simmering Sunni-Shiite tensions here have sharply worsened, in an ominous echo of the civil conflict in Iraq.

Hezbollah’s brief takeover of Beirut led to brutal counterattacks in northern Lebanon, where Sunni Muslims deeply resented the Shiite militant group’s display of power. The violence energized radical Sunni factions, including some affiliated with Al Qaeda, and extremist Sunni Web sites across the Arab world have been buzzing with calls for a jihad to avenge the wounded pride of Lebanese Sunnis.

Although the crisis eased Thursday after Arab diplomats brokered a deal to restart political talks among the factions, the questions that have crippled the government for 18 months remain unresolved. It is not yet clear that enough international consensus exists among the key powers involved in Lebanon — Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the United States — for a durable power-sharing agreement.

Meanwhile, many Lebanese agree that the hardening of Sunni-Shiite animosities — reminiscent of the Muslim-Christian fault line during the country’s 15-year civil war — is likely to make any future conflict here more violent.

“The Sunni-Shiite conflict is in the open now, it’s been triggered and operationalized,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “This is a deep wound, and it’s going to have serious repercussions if it’s not immediately and seriously addressed.”"