Reply #114: Civil war's possible.

[Igel]

Hizbullah, Syria, and the Lahoud government interlock nicely. The Palestinians, numbering in the many hundreds of thousands and neatly held in the "refugee" camps support Hizbullah's anti-Israel policy, and don't care about anything else.

Of all the armed militias that pulled Lebanon into lint back in the '70s and '80s, only Hizbullah is armed. Better than ever.

If a non-Syria-backed government comes to power, the central Lebanese authority just might not like having a relatively large portion of the south of their country effectively not under Lebanese control.

It could get ugly.