The last round of the staggered Lebanese parliamentary elections ended with a bang last Sunday in the north of Lebanon. Most of the final results were predictable: the Harriri-Jumblatt alliance will control the majority in the new parliament with 72 members, the Shia Muslim bloc of Amal and Hizbullah got 35 seats, and the remaining 21 went to Michel Aoun and his allies. Keep in mind that these are not solid blocs and could easily come apart as they get down to work.

It astounds how much political drama a country as tiny as Lebanon is capable of producing, with consequences not only for the region but the world (and we haven't a drop of oil!). There were, for instance, three separate Lebanese delegations in New York to attend events related to the UN summit, in the midst of which Condoleezza Rice was not too busy to meet Saad Harriri, who leads the largest parliamentary bloc here. The recently passed UN Resolution 1959 (not to be confused with last year's Res. 1559 calling for Syria's withdrawal and disarming the resistance) legally puts every member nation and its intelligence services at the service of a UN commission-led by the German judge Detlev Mehlis-whose mission it is to find out who killed Lebanon's prime minister Rafiq Harriri.

All eyes in Lebanon right now are on the parliamentary elections scheduled to start at the end of May and run for 3 weekends, ending sometime in mid-June. A lot has happened since they were declared, a period of dizzying flux followed immediately as each camp moved to claim its piece. Only recently has it become clear where things are going, who are the winners and losers, and why. And given Lebanon’s, lets say, diverse political landscape, it’s enough to make your head spin. Lebanon, to virtually all here, has now passed from Syrian rule to what people here politely refer to as “international oversight” (i.e., Lebanon now answers to Washington and Paris).

All quiet on the southern front this morning. There is not a cloud in the sky over my small village of Deir Kifa in southern Lebanon. You could hear fireworks and far off celebrations well into the night. Yesterday was the south’s turn at the staggered parliamentary elections taking place here in the wake of the Syrian withdrawal. In an unprecedented show of solidarity, the south’s Shia—70% of the population here—came out in force to defy US (and, to many, also Israeli) demands to disarm the Hizbullah-led resistance that liberated them from more than two decades of Israeli military occupation. Everyone knew who would win well in advance—no one doubted that the alliance of the two major Shia parties Amal and Hizbullah would clean up.