To no one's surprise, things are hotting up in Lebanon:
Hundreds of protesters have descended on the Lebanese city of Tripoli to take part in a "day of rage" over the likely appointment of a Hezbollah-backed candidate as prime minister.
Convoys of vehicles took demonstrators to the northern city. Protests were also planned elsewhere.
On Monday, Hezbollah gained the support of parliament needed to allow Najib Mikati to form the next government.
But protesters accuse the Shia Islamist movement of staging a coup.
Commentary from David Beatty in the Daily Star:
Lebanon is about to face one of those moments that illuminate the character of a country. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigating the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is about to move into high gear. The institution’s prosecutor has now handed over draft indictments to a pretrial judge. It is widely believed that persons connected with Hezbollah will be named.
An outside observer might think a public trial of those involved in Hariri’s murder is a positive sign. It would mark a dramatic shift away from Lebanon’s history of settling sectarian strife with bullets and bombs. However, so tortured is the country’s past that inside Lebanon the prospect of the assassins being brought to justice has spawned more fear and loathing than hope.
The worry is that even if the tribunal can establish the supremacy of law, it will spark a new round of hostilities between the Shiite and Sunni communities and their allies. So deep is the concern inside Lebanon that Walid Jumblatt, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party and leader of the Druze community, has declared that given a choice between advancing justice and avoiding armed conflict, he would choose the latter. Why should the Lebanese be made to suffer, the argument goes, just so that justice can be pursued in one case?
Applying a utilitarian, cost-benefit calculation, Jumblatt’s math seems to make sense. In fact it is a prescription for Lebanon remaining a lawless state in perpetuity. If justice is deferred, blackmail and threats will always win out. Physical force will take precedence over the rule of law so that security and justice both lose out.
Saad Hariri most likely won’t be prime minister for very much longer, not because he lost an election but because Hezbollah is threatening his allies and pressuring them to throw their “support” behind a pro-Syrian replacement.
No community in Lebanon is allowed to select or de-select the leader of a different community, yet an Iranian-backed Shia militia is now poised to do both to the Sunnis. They are not going to tolerate the removal of Hariri as their zaim, especially not at a time when the United Nations is about to indict Hezbollah for car-bombing his father.
I can practically hear Lebanese Sunnis locking and loading from here.
Update: and so it came to pass.
Mick Hartley 
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