The Palestinians and Israelis get all the attention. But it is on the tiny sliver of Mediterranean coast known as Lebanon that the political dysfunction of the Middle East is truly epitomized.

Beirut was a major centre in Ottoman times: Indeed, the territory that is now Israel was once ruled from that city. It retained its prominence under the French, and became a freewheeling, sophisticated hub for wealthy Arabs looking to escape the Bedouin parochialism of their native countries.

And then, in the 1970s, it all fell apart -- and hasn't really come together since.

Lebanon's civil war -- which nominally ended in 1990 -- involved Syria, Israel and a variety of other regional actors. But essentially, it came down to the fact that the Arab world's Shiites, Sunnis, Druze and Christians could not share the same nation without repressing (and occasionally killing) one another. In most parts of the Middle East -- Saudi Arabia, for example -- these groups are sufficiently dispersed to avoid blowing one another up. In Lebanon, they live cheek by jowl.

As in any narrative of Arab dysfunction, the Palestinians have played a supporting role. When the PLO wore out its welcome in Jordan in the early 1970s, Yasser Arafat moved his military infrastructure to Lebanon, complicating the country's civil war further. Israel invaded in 1982, threw Arafat out, and then stuck around to fight Iran's Shiite proxy force, Hezbollah-- which itself has outlasted the Israeli presence, and made itself a major nuisance.

Skipping over the 2006 war with Israel (among other major events), this brings us to last week, when Hezbollah's confrontation with West Beirutbased Sunni supporters of the country's moderate, semi-functional government (whose politicians -- did we mention? -- are still occasionally blown up by a Syrian military apparatus that resents having been kicked out of the country in 2005) threatened to bring the country into complete chaos.

Got all that?

Who won last week's confrontation in Beirut? It's hard to say. On one hand, Hezbollah showed its street strength, and got the government to back down on a plan to strip away its private communications and security network. On the other hand, most Lebanese factions seem to blame Hezbollah for staging such a dangerous provocation, and for humiliating the country's Sunnis. No one knows which side would win an all-out civil war. All we know is that the prospects of such a war are now greater than they were a week ago.

Colonialism, oil, Israel and the Iraq war are all regularly cited as the bogeymen responsible for the backwardness that pervades the Middle East. Lebanon's failure to become a normal country after all these years suggests there is something more basic at the root of the region's problems: a regressive climate in which power is wielded not through consensus and diplomacy, but by warring sects and clan leaders.