The Ruwais blast that shook Beirut’s southern suburbs a week ago did more than just bring back the specter of civil war to Lebanon. It also revealed the new power balance controlling the Arab Levant and confirmed that the principal conflict, from which the rest of the region’s conflicts have spawned, is namely the Sunni-Shiite conflict.

That incident marked, if nothing else, the fall of the very notion of having a state that is responsible for security and stability. The social contract, upon which the state is founded, has eroded. And that erosion is in turn due to the sharp divisions separating Lebanon’s societal components and their siding with opposing regional camps that are in conflict.

The Syrian war is no longer just “Syrian.” The war's scope has spread beyond the Levant and has turned into a sectarian war whose fire is affecting Lebanon and Iraq. That war may yet spread to other areas, both Arab and non-Arab, if it is not contained by a comprehensive settlement that allows power to be used only in the service of the people and their fundamental rights.

After enduring “Lebanonization,” which has become synonymous with the dissolution of the central authority and the fragmentation of the national entity into sectarian entities, and “Iraqization,” which added the takfiri phenomenon to the fragmentation process and brought us back to medieval times when it was legitimate to kill “infidels,” now comes “Syrianization,” which combines the above two scourges with the phenomenon of genocide and ethnic cleansing by chemical weapons.