At first glance it is.

Closer observation paints a different picture, however. A picture that depicts distrust, uncertainty, and a great deal of fear.

My Lebanese friends tell me everyone here is living one day at a time. That's the only way to live, they say, when they've been without a president for five months, not knowing for how much longer their country will continue to function with the odds for peace stacked against it.

My friends tell me they worry that the political crisis will plunge the country into conflict, and worst, that the rival politicians and their foreign backers will let Lebanon slip into the total chaos of another civil war.

Many ordinary Lebanese say they would like to believe the feuding political leaders' assurances that none of them, including the powerful regional and international forces that support them, want a repetition of the bloody 1975-1990 civil war.

For many, the horrifying memories of the civil war still resonate. Practically every family has a dreadful account to share of that time: a relative who was killed or has vanished, the struggle to find water to drink, or driving at breakneck speed down an alley to avoid snipers and cannon shells.

The list of nightmares is long, and many Lebanese who experienced the war – in which 150,000 people were killed and 17,000 others who seem to have vanished from the face of this earth, and are considered dead – simply don't see any signs that their political, religious and tribal leaders are doing enough to reconcile and stop history from repeating itself.

This time, the country is split in two and along political lines between a paralyzed pro-Western government, backed by a coalition of anti-Syrian parties, and an alliance of opposition parties led by Hezbollah.

The ruling coalition includes Christians, Sunnis and Druze, and is backed by the U.S.-led West and its Arab allies, while the opposition is dominated by the Shiites and includes Christians and small leftist and pan-Arab nationalist groups. The bulk of the opposition is backed by Syria and Iran.

The feuding parties constantly accuse the other side of taking orders from their foreign backers and try to outbid each other over who is more concerned for Lebanon's interests.

Yet, to be fair, neither side has any qualms about displaying their external loyalties in their quasi-strongholds.

You will see posters of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in west Beirut, with a caption reading "God keep you," next to another poster of Lebanese MP Saad Hariri near his residence that says, "God protect you."

It is no secret that Hariri – whose father, former Premier Rafik Hariri, was assassinated in a massive explosion in February 2005 that sparked the current crisis – also holds Saudi citizenship and spends a lot of his time in the oil-rich kingdom. And it is no secret that the Saudi and Syrian regime are at each others' necks over the Lebanese crisis.

By the same token, there are posters and billboards of Hezbollah's leaders alongside Iran's spiritual leaders, the late Ayatollah Khomeini and today's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In large print across a pedestrian bridge near Hezbollah's stronghold of Beirut's southern suburbs reads in Arabic: "A gift from the City of Tehran to the struggling people of Lebanon."

When asking politicians from Hariri's Future bloc why there are posters of the Saudi monarch, for example, the answer comes back: "How many posters have you seen of Khamenei by comparison?" And then they will tell you that the Saudis have been very generous across the board among Lebanon's poor, without differentiating between Sunni, Shiite or Christian, unlike the Iranians, who only provide for the Shiites.

There is so much distrust. Neither side says there is hope that the crisis can be resolved any time soon, despite the occasional statements of optimism that the upcoming May 13 parliamentary session to vote for a president, called after 18 postponements, will be the one to finally elect army chief, General Michel Suleiman.

Military and security zigzag roadblocks are everywhere outside the residences and offices of the ruling March 14 coalition leaders who remained in Lebanon after a series of assassinations that have targeted their comrades in the past three years.

Thorough personal searches are conducted in makeshift facilities by armed men on visitors going in to see the politicians, and only after being granted advance permission for interviews.

Barbed wire abounds in and around Beirut, whose trendy and reconstructed downtown area, where the government palace is located, has been turned into a quasi-security zone as if sealed by the opposition, which set up tents for their sit-in protest against the government.

It's a peaceful protest in its second year, but many are complaining that their demonstration is doing more harm than good, having drastically affected the businesses downtown, scared off tourists, and is not achieving its political objectives, other than further discrediting a weak government – and killing off what used to be an active nightlife.

Lebanon's politicians boast that this is all a reflection of the only "democratic oasis" in the Arab world. But it can't be denied that the people of this country are aching behind the facade of democracy.