Lebanese people no longer hold back from expressing their hostile feelings towards each other, feelings that were often hidden behind politeness, diplomatic language, mutual interests, and reconciliatory rhetoric whose proponents sensed the danger of slipping into uncontrollable conflicts that are hard to contain.

Tensions nearly erupted between Sunnis and Druze following incidents in Suwayda, Syria, despite good relations and an alliance between the two sides that had strengthened since before 2005 based on opposition to Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and the alliance of interests between former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. The call “O zeal for religion” seems stronger than all temporary alliances, political agreements, and even stronger than national affiliation. The situation on the ground was quickly controlled and the fire under the kettle calmed down with the quiet on the front of the Syrian province, predominantly Druze, and its neighbors from Sunni Arab tribes.

“A Hundred Years of Sectarianism,” a book by Nasri Sayigh, marks the age of the country since France declared it a large republic. Sectarianism whose voice dims and then rises again, its latest manifestation being the sharp verbal “war” erupting today between “Shiites” and some other sects in the country drowning in countless crises.

The sectarian “war” did not break out in Lebanon today; it is at the core of the entity built on a sectarian constitution and sharing spoils. It exploded more than once, with its people slaughtering each other in the civil war that began under national, pan-Arab, and social slogans, then turned into a sectarian war reinforced by Syrian intervention favoring Christians before it soon turned into a guardianship over the country in alliance with Muslims. The Shiites did not participate as a popular bloc in the civil wars but as individuals in nationalist and leftist parties and Palestinian organizations. The founder of the Amal Movement, Imam Musa al-Sadr, protested the civil war and sought to stop it before he disappeared in Libya in 1978.

Afterwards, the movement became involved in many internal conflicts with Lebanese parties and Palestinian organizations and joined the “club” of armed parties in Islamic areas, enjoying distinctive Syrian patronage, extending the relations al-Sadr had built with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.

With the emergence of Hezbollah after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut in 1982, the Shiite sect began a strong rise shared by the party and the movement. This rise was based on the right to resist the Israeli occupation and the growing financial and military power supported generously by Iran and facilitated boundlessly by Syria, within the context of Iranian policy seeking to establish the so-called resistance axis in the Fertile Crescent countries and Yemen.

The assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in February 2005 was the event that shook Lebanon and added a sectarian dimension to the sectarian conflict between Shiites on one side and Sunnis (and Druze) on the other, in two fronts: one supporting Bashar al-Assad’s regime accused of the assassination, and the other opposing it. Another central event was the July 2006 war, which consolidated Hezbollah’s strength as it confronted Israel for a full month and prevented its advance in Lebanese territory.

Hezbollah’s military power grew, as did its involvement in the intricacies of Lebanese politics, its quotas, alliances, and deals. It became a decisive voice in various issues, engaged in armed conflicts that took on a sectarian character in Beirut and Mount Lebanon (May 2008), and its supporters stormed Christian areas on motorcycles on several occasions. Then it got involved in the Syrian war alongside the Syrian regime, a war partly cloaked in sectarianism: Shiites against Sunnis and Sunnis against Shiites.

Everything indicated the complexity of the political situation in Lebanon and the region when the Syrian war began, but the event that shook the region was the Israeli war on Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran with its multiple ramifications and known and unknown causes. This war produced a more complex Lebanese reality. While some Lebanese considered Hezbollah to have suffered a crushing defeat and that it should lay down its weapon, which no longer had a defensive function and became an internal weapon to impose a political reality, the party insisted on keeping its arms, considering itself the only protector of itself and Lebanon, and that the existence of the Shiite sect was linked to this weapon.

The debate between Hezbollah and its opponents escalated into a hidden conflict between members of the Shiite sect and members of other sects, which soon spread to the media and social media platforms. The Shiites promoted the idea that they were targeted as a sect and showed strong unity against other sects. While Hezbollah’s opponents hoped to breach the Shiite wall, the Shiites, including intellectuals, elites, and the general public, engaged in a campaign defending the retention of arms and adopting the theory that the entire sect was targeted. The campaign to dissociate the Shiites from Hezbollah by blaming it for the destruction that befell their villages, towns, and properties failed.

Lebanon today lives amid a semi-declared sectarian and confessional “war,” where all masks and gloves have fallen, producing extremist faces from all sects and confessions dominating TV screens and social media pages, speaking extremist languages without controls, decency, or future considerations, amid a race among TV channels (which are also sectarian and confessional) to fuel the fire of discord by hosting people who fan the flames.

Is all this incitement aimed at making coexistence impossible?