Depending on whom you are listening to, what happened last week in Beirut was described as a "Hezbollah coup". That is what the March 14 Coalition said and so did the Saudi TV channel Al Arabiya.
At the time of writing, Beirut is relatively quiet, but heavy fighting is taking place in the Lebanese mountains. This has triggered an incredibly ugly exchange between Sunnis and Shiites, bringing back memories of the civil war era, with many questioning the intentions of Hezbollah's arms.
For years Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah said that Hezbollah's weapons would never be used internally. This time he added, "arms will be used to protect arms" meaning if anybody tried to dismantle, disarm or provoke Hezbollah, then Hezbollah would fight him.
Nasrallah once recounted an important conversation he had with Lebanon's slain premier Rafik Hariri in early February 2005, one week before Hariri's assassination.
Reportedly, Hariri had spoken about Hezbollah, saying, "I believe in this resistance. And I am telling you that if I become prime minister again I will not implement the (disarmament) article of (UN) Resolution 1559. I swear to you that the resistance and its weapons will remain until the day a comprehensive regional settlement is reached, not just until (the Israeli) withdrawal from the Sheeba Farms."
Hariri, according to Nasrallah, added, "On that day, when that agreement is reached, I will sit with you and say: 'Sir, there is no further need for the resistance and its weapons.' If we agree, that's what will be. If we disagree, I swear to you and before God (he also swore by his deceased son Hussam) that I will not fight the resistance. I will resign and leave the country (before that happens)."
The unusually sharp tone of Nasrallah and his threats to "cut the hand" of whomever tries to touch the arms of Hezbollah, raised more than eyebrows as to where this charismatic leader, hailed recently as another Jamal Abdul Nasser by Arabs and Muslims around the world, was taking Lebanon.
It goes without saying that all parties turned out to be armed in Beirut. But so inferior was the training of March 14 that it faced a disastrous outcome against the military might of Hezbollah.
The tone of March 14 heavyweight Walid Junblatt changed on Saturday, and to a certain extent, so did that of March 14. The government decided to back down on earlier legislation (which had fuelled the entire crisis) keeping both Hezbollah's communication network and re-instating the Shiite security director of Beirut Airport.
While trying to save face as much as possible, the Fouad Siniora government transferred both cases to the army, which in turn did not implement them, saying that solutions will be found "that do not threaten the security of the resistance", thereby securing an end to armed hostilities in Beirut.
It was a bitter slap in the face for March 14. Making things all the more worrying was a relatively passive US response.
Nobody can disarm Hezbollah by force since this would be considered aggression against the Shiite community. Clearly from what happened last week, they won't stand by and watch it happen.
Hezbollah is a symbol of Shiite power in Lebanon. If it goes away, the Shiites fear that they will return to being the under-class of Lebanese society, as they were in the 1950s and 1960s.
Also, many fear that if Hezbollah disarms, it would lose its finances, which allow it to maintain so many charity networks, schools, medical centres and hospitals. Many people rely on these charity organisations for their livelihoods.
Analyses
As the world analyses what Hezbollah did last week, one question should be raised: why do people support Hezbollah? The obvious reason is religion, yet a study conducted in 1996 by Dr Judith Harik, a professor of political science at American University of Beirut, shows otherwise.
In her study, "Between Islam and the State: Sources and Implications of Popular Support for Lebanon's Hezbollah", published in Journal of Conflict Resolution, Volume 40 (March 1996), Harik showed that 70 per cent of Hezbollah's supporters saw themselves only as moderately religious, and 23 per cent said they were religious only out of obligation.
Hezbollah enjoys authority and commands unwavering loyalty among Shiites because it always appears to be a confident political party that is doing an honourable job in fighting Israel.
We don't know if this will change due to what happened last week in Beirut. Adding to the nationalist aspect is the social one, which is that many people in the Shiite community, mainly at the grass-roots level, rely on Hezbollah for charity and welfare.
Hezbollah has succeeded in promoting itself through the media, igniting confidence, safety and security among the 10 million viewers of Al Manar television, for example.
Many of those viewers are Shiites. Not once does Al Manar, for example, show viewers a member of Hezbollah defeated.
Rather, it shows pictures of dead Israelis, real footage of Hezbollah operations, and programmes highlighting Hezbollah's charity organisation, such as the rebuilding of 5,000 homes destroyed by the Israelis in South Lebanon.
Precisely for these reasons, it would be difficult for anyone today to tackle Hezbollah. That is why although understandable, the government's decision to dismantle Hezbollah's communication network was unwise.
The only way to disarm is for the Shiite group to wait until the Israelis leave Sheeba, and then quietly lay down their arms and modify their agenda from a military to a political one.
Otherwise, it would need an Iranian decision to abandon Hezbollah. A Syrian-Israeli peace will not do it (at least not anymore) although it would have done the trick in the 1990s.
Sending of UN officers to arrest Nasrallah is impossible, and the Lebanese government is completely incapable of controlling him. Or Hezbollah can be given power in Lebanon and rather than become a state within a state, become the stat itself.
That too is illogical. Hezbollah cannot rule Lebanon and nobody knows that better than Nasrallah himself.
Had he wanted, then he would not have restored control to the Lebanese Army, but instead marched on the Grand Sarail, ejected Siniora or had him arrested, and then revoked all government decrees regarding the Hariri Tribunal.
He would have propped up a new president by now - Michel Aoun or even a Shiite President - and as Jamal Abdul Nasser once said in a speech at Port Saeed, aimed at the Truman White House, "I tell them that he who does not like our behaviour can drink from the sea. If the Mediterranean is not enough, he can drink from the Red Sea as well!"
Dr Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
