Martyrs' Square in Beirut resembled a pop festival for much of this week as hundreds of student demonstrators sheltered from the Mediterranean sun in tatty tents and makeshift shelters in downtown Beirut, plotting how to proceed with their anti-Syria protest.

There were ideological communists and orthodox Christians, Druze socialists and Shia activists, all preaching a message of unity, while passing round bottles of mineral water to the beat of pop music from CD players.

But they had only to look at the martyrs' statue around which their protest coalesced to see proof of Lebanon's propensity for division. The statue, damaged by shrapnel from the country's long civil war, is now daubed with pictures of Rafik al-Hariri, the former prime minister who dared to stand up to Syria and whose assassination by car bomb on Valentine's Day brought a vast public display of anti-Syria sentiment.

"We are the new generation and we know how to get along together," Ghinwa Allaoui, a 21-year-old Muslim, explained. "I have friends who are Maronites and friends who are Druze and we all see ourselves as Lebanese before anything else - at this time that is what is important."

A few Lebanese police carrying AK47s looked on, with little interest.

The Cedar Revolution, named after the elegant national tree which stands at the centre of the Lebanese flag, had clearly lost some of its fizz after the intoxicating moment on Monday when the pro-Syrian government of Prime Minister Omar Karami resigned.

"That was a great moment but the job is not finished," said Richard Bou Bashir, a 21-year-old student. "I know Syria has said it will remove its troops from Lebanon, but we have heard such promises before and we need to keep up our protest until Syria has gone for good."

These were scenes the Arab world's autocratic regimes have dreaded - and through the power of satellite television such action could catch on fast - peaceful, enormous crowds carrying flags and flowers bringing down a government.

What happened in Lebanon this week, analysts say, is the beginning of a new era in the Middle East, in which popular demand pushes the momentum for democracy and the people can no longer be disregarded.

Television stations broadcast Beirut's protests live across the Middle East, with the dramatic images of Lebanese youths wearing red-and-white scarves and waving the country's red, white and green flag as they handed out white roses to troops who had been ordered to block them. Inevitably, it raised the question among many spectators: What about here? "I wish flowers were handed out in Yemen," said Ahmed Murtada, a worker in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a. "But here, tanks would prevail."

Newspapers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt - authoritarian nations where the state heavily influences the press - did not shy away from showing the protests. But in Syria the state-controlled media were largely silent. State television aired none of the footage that the few Syrians with satellite dishes could see with a flick of the channel.