I didn't claim that it is stable. I was speaking comparatively. Also i was speaking about today. it was my mistake not to state that.
I would agree that Lebanon is in better shape than it was, and that there are places which are worse off.
Compared to the Gaza strip , western Pakistan and several regions of Iraq , and some of the eastern regions of Turkey and possibly some other regions i am forgetting currently , it is more stable. It seems to me as it's bad days are a part of the past. Comparatively it does fare better than some other regions of the middle east .
The issue here is that, as I see it, you are confusing stability with security. Lebanon as it stands today is a fairly safe place, at least relative to a few years ago. It is far from the safest place in the middle east, but there are places where I would feel less secure walking down the street. Parts of Lebanon are still fairly insecure, but Beirut is not in a state of anarchy as of this moment.
The thing is, people not shooting at each other does not mean that the state is particularly stable, at least in anything more than the immediate present. Lebanon has experienced a turbulent, violent past, complete with civil war, interventions by at least three different powers, political turmoil, etc... Lebanon today is not as violent as it was a few years ago, but that does not mean that it cannot easily return to that state. In short, while there are some parts of the middle east which may be less safe than lebanon (and some that are less stable), Lebanon is in far greater danger of regressing to its former state than many other states in the region.
by the way, it is rather a stretch to consider Pakistan a part of the middle east.
I could be completely wrong , but i don't see civil war happening soon. i see Hezbolach and the Lebanon government to control the country enforcing an unspoken truce , where one does not attempt to eliminate the completely the other. The increased presence of UN troops after the war certainly helps a lot in that regard. And it is a stabilizing factor. The fact that Lebanon is not as big as some other regions of the middle east also helps. And i think that 2006 may been a lesson for Hezbollah. And for the rest of the war which would keep a better eye on the area. I may be wrong however and the bad days of Lebanon may not be behind it , since i don't consider my self as an expert on this matter. But i do think my opinion is not completely uninformed.
I actually visited Lebanon ( for a day on a cruise and what i remember the most are the breathtaking stalactites ) and you could see the signs of past war .
Maybe my optimism is unfounded. But currently there are more unstable regions in the middle east , where civil war IS happening.
Stability in the middle east is always a relative thing. There are very few states in the region where the collapse or overthrow of the government, or some other sort of chaos, is unlikely in the near future. In my opinion, perhaps the deciding factor is the recent histories of Lebanon and its neighbors. Syria is going to descend into chaos once the ruling regime falls, but they have managed to forestall that for fourty plus years. Jordan is relativly secure, at least for the moment, and has been since they drove out the PLO. Egypt isn't going to be pretty when Mubarak falls, but isn't going to do to badly. Turkey, for all the talk of military coups and the PKK, is a fairly secure state. Frankly, all these nations have histories of either avoiding major political turmoil, or weathering it, that a more fragile state with a more recent history of relative stability cannot match. Lebanon may be calm for the moment, but it is far more likely to implode than many other states in the region.