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Dispatch From BeirutForget about Shiites and Sunnis. Lebanon's deepest fault line is between rival Christian groups.

By Daniel Kurtz-PhelanPosted Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2007, at 11:31 AM ET

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For the time being, the two sides are prepared for little more than extended bouts of low-intensity street fighting. But the Lebanese Forces often remind opponents of their past as a battle-hardened militia and of the working-class mountain toughs at the core of the party's membership. Aounists, meanwhile, invoke the army—which is filled with pro-Aoun Christians and Shiites who, if it came down to it, would mostly side with Hezbollah—as their own force. "They should remember that the army is still Gen. Aoun's army," Chebel Kassab, a young man camped downtown, warned. On the morning of last month's opposition strikes, the current army commander called in sick.

Since the clashes, the influential Maronite patriarch, Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, has been working to make peace between Aoun and Geagea, and some recent polls indicate growing dissatisfaction among Christians with the belligerence of both factions. "I don't think the major players want a civil war," said political scientist Khashan. But, he added, "The game may become uncontrollable. It all depends on whether they are rational actors, and we know we can't count on that. … We had a 15-year civil war, and we weren't able to learn a thing from it."

It is a distressingly common pattern in the run-up to larger conflagrations: Both sides proclaim their commitment to peace but insist that the aggressions and provocations of the opposing camp demand a response. In Lebanon, even as political leaders have studiously affirmed their aversion to violence, their constituents have driven up the price of Kalashnikovs sevenfold.