Since Nasrallah dramatically pledged Hezbollah’s all-out support for Assad in a May 25 speech, there have been near-daily signs of the Syrian war spilling over into Lebanon. On Monday, a Sunni cleric who has spoken out in support of Hezbollah said he narrowly escaped assassination when gunmen opened fire on him in the southern city of Sidon. A day earlier, Hezbollah militants and rebels battled near Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, the first serious clashes on Lebanese soil since the conflict in Syria erupted more than two years ago.

For the moment, Hezbollah’s popularity among its supporters appears unwavering. At the Rawdat al-Shahidayn cemetery in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the dead from Syria are buried under the floor of a brightly lighted room next to those who have died fighting Israel. In one corner, floor tiles had been removed and a shovel rested on the side of a freshly dug pit that awaited the body of the next fighter to be laid to rest.

Ali Fadl sat on a plastic chair at his brother’s graveside as his widowed sister-in-law, wrapped in black, rocked back and forth in prayer. “This is not painful. Everybody hopes for martyrdom,” he said. “Whatever Hasan Nasrallah says, we do. We do not question.”