Contrary to the assumptions of Washington and Tel Aviv, the thoughts of people who have survived massive aerial bombardment tend to be braced and sharpened:

“Bush did this,” said Majid Kubaisy, standing in the broken glass and rubble of his sportswear shop in a largely Shiite area of southern Beirut. Residents returned to a desolate landscape of ruined apartment buildings cascading dust and the smell of explosives.

Like many of the people who were finding their way back to their old neighborhoods, Mr. Kubaisy blamed the United States as much as Israel for the destruction, saying the conflict had only redoubled his allegiance to Hezbollah.

“If Nasrallah will raise his hand, everyone will follow,” he said. “This time we defended our land, next time we will take the offensive.”

In Sanayah Gardens, a nicely groomed park in an upscale Sunni neighborhood of West Beirut, the 7,000 mostly Shiite refugees who had set up a tent city began to leave for home. The tents that had crowded the garden were taken down, and people were piling mattresses and cooking gear in their cars to leave. Young, Western-educated volunteers brandishing clipboards moved about efficiently Monday as a truck unloaded Red Crescent boxes of aid from Kuwait.

“Why does your government give bombs and intelligence to Israel?’’ asked Rahih al-Tiwwi, one of the volunteers.

Nearby, a family in a packed minivan was loading up with foam-rubber mattresses. The front of the van was decorated with a portrait of Sheik Nasrallah and a bumper sticker that depicted a rocket with the slogan “the divine victory.”

The volunteers who ran the park refuge were an ad hoc group that spanned Lebanon’s religious divisions. Asked for his religion, normally an important aspect of identity here, one of the volunteers, Saarjaoen Vautter, snapped, “I am Lebanese.”

“And damn for this question,” he added. “No offense.”