Rival politicians, including former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, and several religious figures launched a campaign to discredit Bitar, accusing him of bias.

When the judge began summoning officials, they used parliamentary immunity and various legal challenges to avoid having to show up for questioning.

Defiantly, the 46-year-old judge issued arrest warrants, including for former ministers of finance and public works, both Amal members and close Hezbollah allies.

Now Thursday’s street clashes have further thrown into doubt both the future of the investigation and whether Bitar can continue leading it.

“We are dealing with a new equation: either Tarek Bitar leaves, or the country will be ruined,” said Youssef Diab, a political analyst. “We are in front of this new and dangerous equation.”

The establishment parties have collectively worked to block any serious opposition and attempts at reform that might harm them, observers say. They have hampered a forensic audit of the country’s central bank, a key demand of the international community to restore confidence in the crisis-struck Mideast nation, protecting the bank’s longtime governor even as he faces corruption charges in Switzerland and France and accusations of gross mismanagement at home.

Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system has proved impossible to bring down. Protests have been quashed. Warlords have cast themselves as their sect’s protectors, granting favors to their followers.

A revolt against the status quo would mean breaking up the sectarian patronage network, cultivated by the ruling elite and one that many in the divided population benefit from. Many Lebanese politicians have a large — even blind — following. They are quick to blame other factions for the country’s myriad problems and eagerly stoke fears among their supporters that another sect could gain power over them.

Hundreds of thousands thronged streets in Beirut and across Lebanon in late 2019 in some of the largest protests the country has seen. For a few months, the demonstrations unified an often-divided public in revolt against entrenched leaders who have brought the economy to the brink of bankruptcy.

The protests were met with violence, arrests and intimidation, and eventually fizzled out.

Some are banking that elections next spring will bring a degree of change. But the opposition has no viable political program or candidates who can challenge the political elite. And as the economic crisis has thrown three quarters of the population into poverty, vote-buying will be much cheaper.

With pent-up anger among many Lebanese, growing sectarian tensions and a political class desperate to cling to its privileged role, a descent into further violence becomes even more possible.

Michael Young, a senior editor at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, says there could be serious consequences if Hezbollah and Amal manage to derail the port investigation.

“The sudden escalation in violence could provoke new developments in Lebanon that lead to a cancellation of elections, and take the country into a much darker period than the one that exists today,” Young wrote Friday in Diwan, Carnegie’s Mideast blog.