With the scars from Lebanon’s last war with Israel still to heal, many residents in this small, fractured country are increasingly worried about being drawn into another conflict with their Jewish neighbour.

Their fears heightened sharply on Thursday when rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel, raising the spectre of a second front opening in the confrontation with Hamas in Gaza.

The rockets are thought to have been fired by Palestinian groups in Lebanon, not by Hizbollah, but the escalating tension could put more pressure on the armed Shia group to act to support Hamas, its ideological ally in the struggle against Israel.

“For sure I am worried about losing my life, or my job,” said Jad al-Jurdi, a 25-year-old shop manager in Beirut and a member of the Muslim Druze sect.

“During the last war in 2006, everything stopped. If there is another war, there will be no jobs,” he says.

Lebanon is no stranger to conflict. Its population roughly falls into thirds – Sunni and Shia Muslims, and Christians – and for decades it has been the battleground for proxy wars between Israel, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, with western governments also stepping in to shore up their interests in the region.

But while there has been widespread outrage across Lebanon about Israel’s attacks on Gaza, most Lebanese do not want to get dragged into another conflict. “I hope our politicians can find a way to push for peace,” says Wajdi Mazkour, a middle-aged electrician in a Francophone Christian suburb in east Beirut.

Certainly, the government has no desire to enter into another conflict, with Tareq Mitri, the information minister, this week saying there was a nationwide “sense that we do not want to be drawn in” to a new war. “Expressing solidarity with Gaza does not mean wanting to provoke an Israeli attack on Lebanon, or giving any pretext for that.”

Indeed, Lebanon has only just begun to recover from the last conflict with its neighbour, which started in July 2006 when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, sparking a 34-day war in which Hizbollah performed surprisingly strongly, denying Israel victory.

That conflict devastated parts of Lebanon and led to domestic instability that almost erupted into civil war last May. But it was resolved through an Arab-brokered deal that ushered in a new national unity government and a period of relative calm.

With legislative elections in June, some rival politicians have taken the opportunity to bury their hatchets and many analysts expect the composition of the parliament to remain broadly the same, although the balance of power is likely to tip in favour of Hizbollah.

For that reason, many analysts believe the group will not seek to involve itself in the Gaza conflict.

Hizbollah has made no secret of the fact that it is re-arming but it has given no indication it wants to launch or provoke a new conflict, although Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah, its leader, has delivered fiery speeches against Israel.

But some Hizbollah supporters, their outrage over Gaza outweighing any domestic political considerations, say they would be prepared to fight again.

“Who knows what will happen? Only God knows,” said Ali Hassan Hamoud, who took his six-year-old son Hussein, wearing tiny military fatigues and a Palestinian scarf, to a Hizbollah rally on Wednesday. “This demonstration is to show our support for Gaza and the Palestinian resistance ... I would even sacrifice my son.”