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A top March 8 politician recently told Walid Jumblatt, "the Syrians don't want to hear about the [Hariri] tribunal." Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel is the latest victim of an effort to ensure that that command is respected. It would be irresponsible for Hizbullah to carry through on its threat to take to the streets. A government of national unity cannot be imposed through measures certain to heighten national discord. But worse, Hizbullah, through its alliance with Syria and its repeated efforts to neutralize the Hariri tribunal, is risking its own future as an accepted Lebanese party. The tribunal is Syria's Achilles heel. Even if a mid-level intelligence operative is accused, the centralized nature of the Syrian system is such that prosecutors will soon end up at the peak of the security apparatus, perhaps reaching into President Bashar Assad's inner sanctum. The fight over the future of the Syrian regime is taking place now, and the only option Assad might be left with if the process goes through is to rid himself of essential pillars of support. This could be as damaging to him as being held personally responsible for ordering the Hariri hit. Hizbullah's anxieties are understandable. If Syrians are fingered by United Nations investigator Serge Brammertz, Assad is unlikely to comply with a request to send them before the mixed tribunal. The president has said several times that Syrian suspects would be tried before Syrian courts. If that happens there could be a showdown between Damascus and the international community, putting Hizbullah in a tight spot. Not only might the party find that weapons transfers from Syria and other forms of cooperation would come under greater international scrutiny, it would be ever more difficult for Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to play up his support for Assad without risking an angry Lebanese Sunni backlash. Syrian haste is pushing Nasrallah, but also his chief ally, Michel Aoun, into a potentially perilous venture. No one doubts that Hizbullah can mobilize a large number of supporters. The party's clients in the various ministries might cease working, gumming up the country's administrative system. There is a possibility that access to the airport will be cut, as it was last summer when the party faithful protested against a satirical show that dared poke fun at Nasrallah. Hizbullah doesn't need to break heads or burn property to make things very difficult for the majority.

However, the party should be careful. First of all, even if the demonstrations are non-violent, they will be perceived as acts of intimidation. Intimidation in Lebanon usually has the opposite effect to what its practitioners intend. On March 8, 2005, Nasrallah hoped to intimidate those demanding a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon; instead he produced March 14. The confessional system is a fine-tuned Maserati, not a Trabant. You cannot bludgeon your adversaries into bowing to your priorities if it means that theirs are disregarded. That's not how this society works.

A second reason is more prosaic: After taking Lebanon into a devastating war last summer, Hizbullah now threatens to carry it into a domestic crisis with prohibitively high economic costs. This will eliminate what little confidence the country managed to salvage after the end of fighting in August. If the airport is made inaccessible, if ministries are prevented from functioning, if stores and offices are forced to close down because of protracted actions by Hizbullah and its comrades, everyone will lose, at a time when the country is in the delicate process of rebuilding.