Quotes of the Day

The Lebanese elections that ended on June 19 were supposed to herald a new era of independence from Syrian control. But the killing of another prominent anti-Syrian figure has overshadowed the opposition's success in securing a majority in the new parliament. George Hawi, a former secretary-general of the Communist Party and a critic of Syria's domination of Lebanon, died when a bomb exploded beneath his Mercedes in a busy Beirut street. Hawi was the second anti-Syrian activist to die in June, and many in Lebanon blame the murders on Syria and its allies in the Lebanese intelligence services, though Syria denies involvement.

Rising tensions seem unlikely to abate unless Emile Lahoud, the pro-Syrian President, resigns, but he refuses to do so and the opposition bloc is short of the two-thirds majority required to begin impeaching him. That portends a potential deadlock between a President determined to see out his term and an opposition-dominated government that believes Lahoud was involved in the murder of former Premier Rafik Hariri.

"How can you have Lahoud sitting around the same Cabinet table with ministers who are united by the one thought that he is responsible for the death of their historic leader?" asks Chibli Mallat, professor of international law at St. Joseph University in Beirut. And as this stalemate deepens, Lebanese fear that another assassin's bomb will be used to try to break it. Walid Jumblatt, leader of Lebanon's Druze sect and a senior opposition figure, thinks he could be one target. In a television interview he called on his followers to "behave calmly and peacefully" should he be assassinated. "This is my last will and testament," said Jumblatt, who rarely leaves his heavily guarded home south of Beirut. Some opposition activists are taking extra security measures but many of them feel dangerously exposed. "I'm trying," says Ziad Majed of the opposition Democratic Left movement, "but if they want to get you, they can."

• NICHOLAS BLANFORD
• Tension mounts in Lebanon as another anti-Syrian figure is assassinated