Lebanon’s ominous sense of deja vu

The Sunnis were lucky: The homemade bomb that exploded outside their little filling station in the early hours Friday didn’t ignite the tanks of gasoline. Shrapnel smashed through the glass windows and metal shutters, but the lone employee was in the bathroom and nobody was hurt.

Shiite gangs roamed the surrounding streets that night, attacking any Sunni symbols they could find, including a mosque. All over Lebanon, Shiites were spoiling for revenge after seeing television footage of the funeral of assassinated Christian Cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel.

Mourners, including some Sunnis, had cursed Shiites and their leaders at the funeral. Afterward, Shiites turned their rage on the nearest Sunnis they could find. Sunnis fought back. A cycle of violence, with uncomfortable echoes of Lebanon’s past, was getting underway.

“The country is headed for war,” said Abbas Ismail, 50, a Sunni who works in the bombed gas station. He stood on a small concrete ledge as a sinking sun spilled long shadows over Beirut’s southern suburbs. “People think we are going to face a civil war.”

Brawls and vandalism with sectarian overtones have erupted in the Lebanese capital in recent days, especially where rival sects or political parties live side by side. Gangs roamed the streets, looking for a place to vent their rage.

The incidents are minor: insults shouted, rocks thrown at mosques, posters of sectarian leaders shredded. But they reveal a precarious mood. This is just the sort of low-level violence that has sparked clashes and fueled Lebanon’s internal religious fighting for generations.

A political rift has grown steadily more serious. On one side is a government clinging precariously to existence; on the other, a Hezbollah-led opposition determined to grab a greater share of power.

With Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite party, and its allies threatening to stage massive protests to topple the government, there is mounting concern that street violence could give way to wider reprisals.

“Maybe it will start like this. It’s very obvious -- in 1975 it started like this,” said Romel Sherri, a 34-year-old engineer, referring to the start of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. Like most people in Lebanon, Sherri was confident that his own group, Hezbollah, would behave itself, and skeptical about the intentions of its rivals.

“Hassan Nasrallah can control the street, but the others can’t,” he said, referring to the popular leader of Hezbollah. “They start throwing poison between the religions.”

Against the backdrop of religious slaughter in Iraq, tensions are particularly thick between Lebanon’s Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Members of both sects speak of a regional spillover, saying that news from Iraq, along with growing Arab anxiety over the rising influence of Shiite-ruled Iran, has worsened the animosities here.

“If we hear on the news at night that Shiites have been killed by Sunnis in Iraq, then they want to attack Sunnis here in Lebanon,” said Ismail, the gas station employee. “It makes them hate us even more.”

This is not the same Lebanon that slipped into civil war three decades ago, with the most glaring difference this: Instead of Christians fighting Muslims, the most heated divisions are emerging among rival Christians and, especially, between Sunnis and Shiites.

“It’s much more among communities, internally, than between communities,” said Fadia Kiwan, head of political science at Beirut’s St. Joseph University. “The tension that is of concern to everybody now is the emergence of a Sunni and Shiite split. The situation is very critical.”

Tensions also have flared between Christians who are still loyal to the government and the followers of Gen. Michel Aoun, a popular Christian leader who has forged an unlikely alliance with Hezbollah. The night Gemayel was killed, furious young men from the slain minister’s Falangist Party attacked Aoun’s posters and burned his militia flags in Beirut’s Christian neighborhoods.

The tiny gas station that came under attack stands at the entrance to a small enclave of about 60 Sunni families. A ramshackle maze tacked together from cinderblocks and scraps of corrugated tin, their neighborhood is an impoverished island in a sea of Shiites.

These are the southern suburbs, indisputably Hezbollah’s turf. But above a rusting fuel tank at the small gas station, Sunnis have tacked up a massive banner printed with the pictures of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; his son, parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri; and the elder Hariri’s Sunni driver, who hailed from a nearby neighborhood and was killed in February 2005 along with his boss.

“Our eyes are on you,” read the Arabic lettering swimming across a backdrop of Lebanese flags.

The massive poster is a sign of defiance. The younger Hariri has accused Syria of assassinating Lebanon’s leaders, and is battling to establish an international tribunal to prosecute his father’s killers. He is also locked in a political battle with Hezbollah, which has long been backed by Syria.

The gas station owners acknowledge that once Shiite customers notice the banner, they usually don’t come back.

“If we take this picture down, it’s humiliation for us,” said Mohammed abu Ali, 45, a driver who lives in the neighborhood. “If the situation were calm, we’d take it down. But in times like these, we can’t.”

Hezbollah put out word Friday that it would go ahead with long-threatened street demonstrations meant to topple the government.

The date of the demonstrations will be a surprise, they said, but they might begin as early as Sunday. Shiites were already looking forward to showing off their numbers.

“We will stay in the streets,” said Hassan Khodor, a Hezbollah official in the predominantly Shiite Beirut neighborhood of Zkak al Blat, “until the government resigns.”

The Shiites from this neighborhood say that Druze, Christians and Sunnis rampaged in the streets Friday, shouting insults and ripping down posters of Nasrallah. The men of the neighborhood attacked the interlopers. The army had to wade into the brawl.

“They used to humiliate the opposition parties, Hezbollah and Amal. But now they are attacking the Shiites in general,” Khodor said. “They even insulted our religious traditions. This amazed me.”

megan.stack@latimes.com