"Lebanon is Hezbollah & Hezbollah is Lebanon"

"...Anthony Shadid is reporting from Lebanon for the New York Times and observes that Hizballah is now the most powerful force not just in Lebanon but in the Lebanese government.
To a degree, this is all democracy in action. Hizballah and its allies control the most seats in the Lebanese parliament, so they have the constitutional right to nominate whoever the hell they like to be the prime minister.* In that way, Najib Miqati is as or more legitimate a choice to be the prime minister as/than any of the prime ministers during the 30-year Syrian occupation. And after spending Lebanon's first 50 or so years as its most underrepresented and ignored major sect, the fact that the Shia are now exercising political power in line with their demographic strength is not in and of itself a bad thing.
But that's it for what passes for the good news.
I want, though, to focus on how this plays into the way another war between Hizballah and Israel might look. Israel, since the conclusion of the Lebanese Civil War, has always held the government of Lebanon responsible for the actions of Hizballah. In the 1993's 'Operation Accountability," for example, Israel said it was bombing southern Lebanon in part to coerce the governments of Syria and Lebanon to rein in Hizballah. (Why the Israelis thought Hafez al-Asad cared about people dying in southern Lebanon, Dear Reader, is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.) In 1996's "Operation Grapes of Wrath," meanwhile, Israel actually gave us a foretaste of the 2006 war by targeting Beirut and Lebanese infrastructure (such as power stations), again in an effort to get the government of Lebanon to crack down on Hizballah.
Obviously, this whole "getting the government of Lebanon to crack down on Hizballah" strategy was a bit crazy and did not work since Hizballah was so strong and the government of Lebanon so weak. But it was politically more viable than attacking the people that actually might have stood a chance at cracking down on Hizballah -- namely, Syria and Iran.
But Israel's habit of hitting Beirut gets a little less crazy each year. In 1993 and 1996, it made no sense to target the government of Lebanon. By 2006, though, Hizballah was in the government of Lebanon -- or was at least holding seats in parliament. And now, Hizballah has formed its first government in Lebanon, which probably makes the organization a little nervous. There are huge risks associated with this. In another war, for example, Israel will be able to claim -- for the first time, really -- that Hizballah is Lebanon, and Lebanon is Hizballah. Since Hizballah controls the government, any attack on the institutions of the state -- to include the US-equipped Lebanese Armed Forces -- will be legitimate.....
This is the new era into which Lebanon has entered. The big winner in all of this, of course, is the government of Israel, ... The big loser in all of this? Everyone north of the Blue Line..."