After a massive pro-Syrian rally sponsored by Hezbollah and possibly bolstered by Damascus, Lebanese president Emile Lahoud has decided to reinstate Omar Karami as Prime Minister -- the same PM that the pro-democracy rallies chased from office:

Lebanon's president looked set to ask the outgoing pro-Syrian prime minister to form a government on Wednesday, a step sure to anger the anti-Syrian opposition who pressured him to resign in the first place.

President Emile Lahoud, buoyed by a mass rally in support of his Syrian backers, began consultations with MPs that were likely to preserve Syria's political grip on its much smaller neighbor.

Speaker Nabih Berri's bloc named Omar Karami as prime minister, as did the deputies of guerrilla group Hizbollah. Karami resigned as prime minister last week after huge anti-Syrian protests in Beirut but stayed on as caretaker.

Other pro-Syrian MPs were expected to follow, making it all but certain Karami would be reinstated.

This could tear Lebanon apart, as it likely heralds a return to the streets for the pro-democracy forces and would just as likely set the stage for a more immediate Hezbollah reaction. What most of the Lebanese will see is a return of the same government that may have been complicit in Rafik Hariri's murder, if not primarily guilty of it, working on behalf of their Syrian masters.

Clearly the rally yesterday gave the collaborators and oppressors some enthusiasm for pressing forward as though nothing had changed. I suspect that new pro-democracy rallies will be attempted after this slap in the face. The question will be whether they are tolerated as before by the Lahoud/Karami coalition and the guns of Hezbollah, and what the Lebanese Army decides to do about supporting either.

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