The present crisis was sparked with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, and a series of assassinations and political disputes that followed it has swept the country into its worst predicament since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
Although the army chief, Gen. Michel Suleiman, has been selected by consensus as the presidential candidate, political parties have failed no less than 18 times to elect a president into office, leaving the country without a head of state since November, with the expiry of pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud's term.
The feuding camps are still wrangling over the make-up of the next government, in which the opposition is said to be seeking enough portfolios in the cabinet to guarantee veto power in major decisions, and thus to be able to stop the implementation of any Israeli-friendly U.S. policy.
Tension is high with the exchange of rhetoric and accusations, while a Sunni-Shiite political strain has emerged for the first time. Furthermore, a number of street clashes have erupted, and it is said that every Lebanese household has a weapon stored away.
An observer would think war is at the doorstep.
But officials from the pro-Western ruling March 14 coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition have told the Middle East Times there is a general awareness that it is not in the interests of any Lebanese party or the key regional and international players to ignite armed strife in this small country.
An official from Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, insisted that his organization's weapons are only to be used against Israel and will never be pointed at any Lebanese under any circumstances.
This assurance is what the pro-Western camp is betting on as the major guarantee against armed civil strife.
MP Ammar Houri from the Future bloc, a March 14 member, ruled out a war because, "in the worst case," that might remove Hezbollah from the framework of a legitimate anti-Israeli resistance movement.
"Plus," he told the Middle East Times in Beirut, "even if we assume that the Persian camp seeks to ignite a Sunni-Shiite war in Lebanon, no one knows where it will end. It might start in a specific neighborhood in Beirut, but it could end in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. It's a fireball that no one wants to risk."
Houri, a Sunni, added that although there are plenty enough guns in private hands to undertake a civil war those weapons, and the many mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods, form a "balance of fear that cancels out any chance for a civil war."
Another March 14 MP, Antoine Zahra from the Christian Lebanese Forces, said that war was not just a matter of "taking our guns out and shooting at each other. War is very big and expensive, which requires will. There is no will [for that] in Lebanon; we've been hurt by the war," in which he was personally active as the Lebanese Forces militia's head of "military reconnaissance" in a certain area, as he put it.
Information Minister Ghazi Aridi told this journalist that a "decision for a war is much bigger than Lebanon."
The politicians here see Lebanon as the "arena" used to settle political scores between the United States and its Arab allies on the one hand, which support the ruling coalition, and the Iranian-Syrian alliance that backs the opposition, on the other.
What if these key power players trigger something in Lebanon?
Aridi, like his comrades in the March 14 alliance and his foes in the opposition, said he does not believe any of the foreign players wants the crisis to deteriorate into such a deadly conflict.
Lebanon's Shiite spiritual leader Sayed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah told the Middle East Times in an interview from the Hezbollah stronghold of Beirut's southern suburbs that international, regional and Lebanese interests would all be badly affected by such strife.
"There is no chance for any internal Lebanese war because it will destroy the temple on the heads of everyone, whether America, Israel or any of the Arab countries," Fadlallah said.
Just as the Lebanese leaders concur that total civil breakdown is not imminent, they also agree that their differences are not religious-sectarian, but are a political crisis whose course will follow the larger game plans of Syria-Iran and the West. And until that larger dispute is resolved, Lebanon is set to remain stuck in limbo.