Fares Soueid, a Maronite Christian M.P. from Jbeil just outside Beirut, takes an even harder line. "There can be no talks with this current government, which we think represents Syria and is responsible for the death of Hariri. You cannot say you were a friend of Hariri and talk to this government. Any talks would mean we lose our Sunni partners." (The Hariri bloc is Sunni.)

"We want the truth," he adds, echoing a slogan of the opposition. "And we want the Hariri family and supporters as our partners."

When asked about the possibility that not negotiating with the government could risk a delay or the postponement of the election, Soueid says, "We will then continue our intifada" -- using the Arabic word for uprising, usually applied to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation.

In Soueid's most audacious move, he openly blames not just the Syrians, but also Hezbollah, for killing Hariri. Such an accusation is highly unusual, even from those who oppose the militant group.

Soueid says the Shiite community has been mentally "kidnapped" by the popular group and needs to break free. "The Lebanese opposition is ready to give assistance to the Shiite community. We know very well that if they are not represented, this will be a big problem," he says. "But this special position of Hezbollah after the withdrawal of the Israelis has to stop. They invented the dispute over the Shebaa Farms [a small strip of land claimed by both Lebanon and Israel, which Hezbollah has used as a justification for continuing the armed struggle against Israel], but the resistance in Shebaa benefits Syria and not Lebanon."

Syria has used the Shebaa Farms situation, and Hezbollah, as bargaining chips and proxies in its own bitter dispute with Israel over the occupied Golan Heights, which Syria lost to Israel during the 1967 war.

Over the past 20 years Hezbollah, or "Party of God," has made a remarkable transformation from a militant Shiite group fighting the Israeli occupation with support from Syria and Iran, to a legitimate political party and social-services provider to the desperately poor rural Shiite. Its near-mythical status as the only Arab army to defeat the Israelis secured it popularity, and its reputation for integrity has given it political legitimacy in Lebanon. The United States takes a darker view of Hezbollah: Citing its alleged role in terror attacks against U.S. targets during the 1980s, it classifies it as a terrorist group. Since Hezbollah mobilized at least 500,000 people in a mass pro-Syria demonstration two weeks ago, however, the United States has realized it must deal with Hezbollah in order for any political settlement to work.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah serves as a kind of symbolic stand-in for the fraught issues of Israel, and Lebanese and pan-Arab resistance to it. Hezbollah's general secretary, Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah, has used his group's prestige, and the potent charge that the opposition is doing the bidding of Israel and the United States, to blunt calls that it be disarmed.

That call is contained in United Nations Security Council resolution 1559, which demands not only a Syrian pullout but the disarming of Hezbollah. Nasrallah has denounced 1559 as a foreign plot to weaken Lebanon and Hezbollah in the struggle against Israel.

Soueid argues that "Israel is not afraid of the Syrian army, and it knows that its presence in Lebanon was never aggressive toward them." The real issue, however, is not the Syrian army but Hezbollah. Israel has long supported the Syrian presence in Lebanon, but only because that provided an answerable "address" in the event of Hezbollah attacks against it. It is no secret that both the United States and Israel would love to see Hezbollah disappear off the face of the earth -- and it is that wish that Nasrallah has exploited expertly. (Israel actually helped Hezbollah's cause by openly calling for it to be disarmed, a move that backfired so badly among Lebanese that the United States had to tell its ally to keep quiet.)

As tension between the opposition and loyalist factions, including Hezbollah, has risen, some ominous rhetoric has begun to appear. Both Soueid and Jalloul have been the subject of anonymous fliers calling them Zionist agents. Even Jumblatt -- who opposes calls to disarm Hezbollah, earlier bemoaned the failure of Iraqi insurgents to kill American Under-Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and has a long history of fighting both the Israelis and his current Maronite Christian allies -- was portrayed as a rabbi in signs held during a Hezbollah rally.

Opposition leaders say they expect more violence and political assassinations as the Syrians withdraw and the Lebanese security services become more worried about being hung out to dry by their political partners. Besides, Syria has a motivation to see violence break out: After all, it was Lebanese violence -- spurred by outside powers Iran, Israel and others -- that shattered the country and required their presence in the first place.

It is difficult to say whether the splits in the opposition merely reflect disagreements over tactics, or fundamental differences that will endure even if Syria leaves the scene. But upon the answer may hang the future of Lebanon.

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