The Lebanese government formally announced the election will be held on time - on May 29th 2005.

The million-person demonstration, the two-month sleep-in at the tent-city, the countdown campaign, the village campaign, the media pressure, the international pressure - it all came together. It's a new era in Lebanon now. The time of post-war occupation and oppression is over. The Cedar Revolution is now over, too.

It wasn't easy living in a tent-city in downtown Beirut.

700 people were there for more than 60 days, eating outside, sleeping outside, and using outhouses set up next to a pricy Virgin Megastore. They all agreed on the basics: Lebanon should be free of Syrian occupation, free elections should be held on time, and a national Lebanese identity must be forged to counter the tribal hatefest of the past.

They don't agree about anything else whatsoever. Some are left-wing. Some are right-wing. Some fixate on their own narrow particular interests. Some have national and even global concerns. They argued about this stuff constantly. That's fine because that's democracy. But they're cranky. They're exhausted. And now they're finished.

I've been impressed with the way such an extremely diverse group of people have been mixing it up. Militia guys ate breakfast with art school students in the next tent - and they affectionately bonded with each other. That's not something you're ever likely to see in America. But the camp was getting tense at the end. Fights began to break out as the perfect storm that brought them together began to blow over.

The Syrian military has now withdrawn to their side of the border. The secret police are almost certainly still around, but they're a lot less scary when they can't back up their agenda by force of arms. Syrian intelligence agents can still operate as terrorists and spies, but without an army they can't control what happens on the ground. The pall of fear over Lebanon has largely been broken. The democracy activists feel the difference. I feel it, too. I wouldn't quite call this a free country yet - not while Hezbollahland still exists as its own entity - but it feels like one now. The air is different. It's lighter.

Forging a new national identity will take a long time - if it ever truly happens at all. Lebanon will never have a true melting pot culture like the United States. This is an ancient land. Every last inch of it has been fought over and fiercely defended for centuries. Different parts of the country feel like separate micro-civilizations. But the people here have some things in common with each other that they don't have in common with anyone else. Lebanese Christians can understand and relate to Lebanese Muslims in ways that they never will be able to relate to, say, Christians from Kansas.

When I first arrived in Lebanon all the tent-city activists I spoke to said they thought the chances that the election would be held on time were near zero. They were wrong. Barring any last-minute shenanigans, the election will in fact be held on time.

So the tent-city movment is finished. Their objectives have been achieved. It is time to take down the camp.

Art school students from Alba University, Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, are making a model of the tent-city so everyone will remember what Martyrs' Square briefly looked like. (Notice the Roman archeological site at one end of it.) The camp still stands as I write this. But tomorrow - with sadness, joy, and relief - it will be dismantled. They won and now they can go home.