Hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah members and their allies flooded central Beirut demanding changes in the government's makeup as soldiers strung more barbed wire around the offices of the Western-backed prime minister.
Buoyed by the big turnout after a week of street protests, the pro-Syria opposition gave Prime Minister Fuad Saniora an ultimatum of a "few days" to accept its demand to form a national unity government with a big role for Hezbollah or face an escalating campaign to oust him.
Saniora, in his fortified office downtown, rejected the demand and urged his foes to resume negotiations. The opposition should "return to the constitutional institutions to discuss differences and reach real solutions," he said in a written statement.
Political unrest has split the country along sectarian lines, with most Sunni Muslims supporting the Sunni prime minister and Shiite Muslims backing the militant Hezbollah. Christian factions are split between the two camps.
But despite the heated rhetoric of the political confrontation, Sunday's mass gathering remained peaceful and left the door open to the possibility of a settlement.
"Hopefully it won't be long. At the end, there will be no winner, no vanquished. We should all be winners," Saad Hariri, leader of parliament's anti-Syria majority and a Saniora supporter, told reporters.
Police had no immediate crowd estimate, but the horde that jammed downtown plazas and many neighborhoods appeared one of the biggest in a country that has seen a string of mammoth demonstrations by both sides in recent years.
Pro-government groups staged a rival demonstration that drew tens of thousands in the northern port city of Tripoli.
On Sunday, Saniora said he was open to dialogue and acknowledged the political crisis threatened Lebanon's security, economy and political system.
"We don't want Lebanon to be an arena of the wars of others," Saniora said, in a veiled reference to Syria and Iran.
"Lebanon is a nation, not an arena," he said.
Plunged into this fresh political crisis the Lebanese people are united in anxiety over the future.
Some are determined to pack up and leave. Others are resolved more than ever to stay.
"We have never seen this level of brain drain," said Carole Contavelis, director of a headhunting agency in Beirut.
"It happened all of a sudden after the summer war" between Israel and Hezbollah, said Contevalis, who launched her agency seven years ago after completing her studies in France.
In recent weeks she has seen a growing exodus of educated Lebanese who were once registered with her company and looking for work in Lebanon, but are now leaving, mainly for Arab countries.
"Out of 40 candidates in my files who were seeking jobs before the [July to August] war, 30 have today left for foreign countries," she said.
Herself a child of Lebanon's civil war years (1975 to 1990), even Contevalis said she is ready to leave if she finds work abroad.
"After the [civil] war ended, we had new confidence in the country, we came back. But we see today that all these years of war have led us to nothing," she said.
Above all, Contevalis said she was "disgusted to see that this country never learns anything from its mistakes."
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