Fouad Ajami, who among his other achievements was the author of "Beirut: City of Regrets" (Norton, 1988) discusses recent events and the background that led up to them:

"The Shiites are Lebanon's single largest community. There lie before them two ways: Lebanonism, an attachment to their own land, assimilation into the wider currents of their country, an acceptance of it as a place of services and trade and pluralism; or a path of belligerence, a journey on road to Damascus--and to the Iranian theocracy. By the time the guns fall silent and the Lebanese begin to dig out of the rubble, we should get an intimation of which Shiite future beckons. The Shiites can make Lebanon or they can break it. Their deliverance lies in a recognition of the truths and limitations of their country. The "holy war" they can leave to others.

There could have been another way: There could have been a sovereign state in Lebanon, and the Syrians would have let it be, and the distant Iranian state would have been a world apart. There needn't have been a Lebanese parody of the Iranian Revolution, a "sister republic" by the Mediterranean sustained with Iranian wealth. The border between Israel and Lebanon would have been a "normal" border. (The Lebanese would settle for a border as quiet and tranquil as the one Syria has maintained with Israel for well over three decades now, with the Syrians waging proxy battles on Lebanese soil and through Lebanese satraps.)

But the Lebanese have been given to feuds among themselves, and larger players have found it easy to insert themselves into that small, fragile republic. Now the Lebanese have been given yet again a cautionary tale about what befalls lands without sovereign, responsible states of their own. "

These points are excerpted from the middle of a very fine essay that lays out some of the politics in Lebanon and the region. Essential reading for people wishing to understand the background of the current proxy war.