BEIRUT — Hezbollah already won what they called a “Divine Victory” in the war with Israel in 2006; by comparison their success at the polls in the 2009 elections seems like a sideshow — and a foregone conclusion.

BEIRUT — Zeina Halabi lives in London, but that hasn't stopped politicians in Lebanon from trying to buy her vote. One week before Lebanon's June 7 parliamentary elections, the 25-year-old's voting district is hotly contested. Two competing political parties have offered the graduate student an airline ticket home in exchange for her vote. Halabi turned down the first offer, from the U.S.-backed March 14 coalition. But she accepted a $700 plane ticket offered by Hezbollah ally Michel Aoun’s political party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM).

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon — Fadi El Tayaar’s home used to be in the middle of one of Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camps, Nahr al-Bared. It was a bustling center of commerce in Lebanon’s north, and he remembers how the main street was once crammed with Lebanese shoppers during holidays. “The Lebanese were depending on the items and goods from here,” he said. “It was a market, the prices were cheap.”