Lebanon yearns for national unity as war revives specter of 1980s – POLITICO

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, it exploited the sectarian fissures of a country shattered by civil war.

This time, despite long-running divisions, many Lebanese are desperate to preserve a spirit of national solidarity in the face of the Israeli attack across the southern border, and want to forge a new political order rising above sectarianism now that Hezbollah has been weakened — partly by electing a president after a two-year power vacuum.

None of this will be easy. The challenge of holding together a country devastated by economic crisis — with 85 percent of people estimated to be living beneath the poverty line — is daunting. Lebanon faces its biggest crisis of people fleeing their homes for more than four decades, as Israeli soldiers battle Hezbollah's Shiite militia in the south, and pummel the country in airstrikes.