A SUNNI Muslim businessman from Lebanon's besieged port city of Sidon said that "90 per cent" of his countrymen backed Hizbullah. A leading Christian said: "We have graduated from the sectarianism of the civil war." A Greek Orthodox doctor said: "Nobody is asking Hizbullah to halt its attacks."
Dr Mounir Shamaa, a world renowned liver specialist and pillar of the Greek Orthodox community, continued: "This is the most painful thing that has happened to Lebanon, much more painful than what happened in the 16 year civil war.
"What is most painful is that for the last five years we have been talking about construction rather than destruction." The doctor says most Lebanese admire and applaud the Hizbullah fighters who are braving Israel's barrage and continue to fire rockets into Israel.
"We were just on the brink of achieving real movement on the reconstruction front," Mr Marwan Shukri, a Ministry of Information spokesman, said. "The restoration of electricity, water, and telephones had prepared the way for investment and the return of Lebanese living abroad."
"We had become optimistic about our economic future. Now our hopes have been dashed, the hopes of Lebanese from all communities. This onslaught puts us all in the same boat."
On the political front the Lebanese "are standing together," Mr Shukri said. And there is ample evidence of his claim.
On Sunday the Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir - a fierce opponent of Hizbullah - preached a strong sermon in which he referred to the fighters as "our brothers" and to "our people" in the south.
He called upon families and institutions in the Maronite heartland to give shelter to refugees, who are moving into churches and schools and being provided with aid by the Catholic Caritas charity.
"The Israelis forgot that this happened during earlier attacks on the south in 1978 and 1993," Mr Shukri from the Information Ministry said.
"Israel's intention is to infiltrate and break our unity, but it has failed. People who were critical of the government and its policies before the assault now fully back the government," he said. "People who did not like Hizbullah before at least admire its fighters and understand we must fight for the south."
Another Lebanese source said the only critics of Hizbullah and of the government's handling of the crisis were a few hardline Maronites grouped around the rebel army officer, Gen Michel Aoun, whose insurrection prolonged the civil war from 1989 to 1990.
"But they no longer count as political force in the country," she said. "And their present attitude will make them even more unpopular than they were."
The Lebanese believe they are "on their own" and are somewhat proud of their tragic isolation. "We are not like other Arabs who make peace with Israel while it continues to occupy their land," a Christian Lebanese Nationalist said, referring to the PLO and Jordan.
"With all our weaknesses and faults we remain the only real democracy in the Arab world. Our leaders do not dictate to us like those of the Gulf or Egypt or even Jordan," he said.
"Our government has to answer to the people. It would not get away with making a deal which leaves Israel in occupation of the south," he added. "The government would face an insurrection".
The other side of the coin is that, if Israel were to withdraw, depriving the Hizbullah fighters of their raison d'etre, the Lebanese people would support their army when it imposed peace and quiet along the border.
The Lebanese Foreign Minister, Mr Fares Bouez, said recently that Hizbullah would not be permitted to operate once Israel has committed itself to withdrawal.
Hizbullah's 300 to 800 lightly armed fighters would be no match for the 55,000 strong Lebanese army, reconstituted and well trained, which, Mr Bouez said, would go into action against Hizbullah if it in any way threatened the "liberation of the southern border zone".
Reuter adds from Tripoli: The Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gadafy, said yesterday that Israel's bombardment of south Lebanon was an outcome of the international "peacemakers' summit" held in Egypt last month.
"What's taking place in Lebanon is the resolutions of the Sharm el Sheikh summit," Col Gadafy said at his bombed out house in a Tripoli barracks, site of a US raid in 1986.
The summit, co hosted by Egypt and the United States and attended by western and Arab leaders, has since been criticised by some Arab countries for focusing on political violence instead of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
