If the international community needed reminding that Hezbollah are seen by some as sinister Islamists with a wide-ranging criminal network and aims that include arms smuggling, civil attacks and spreading militant Shi’ism, this week’s arrests in Egypt have made that point forcefully.

Yesterday, Thursday, Egypt’s public prosecutor ruled that 49 suspected supporters be detained for, “15 days for questioning on suspicion of membership in a clandestine organization calling for rebellion.”

The enmity between the party and Egypt, fueled by Hezbollah’s support for Hamas and Egypt’s perceived lack of support for Palestinians, deepened during the conflict in Gaza at the start of this year. Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah made a series of coruscating anti-Egypt speeches.

The allegations come just as Hezbollah’s campaign for the Lebanese elections gets underway, and illustrate perfectly the dilemma that foreign governments face when considering the Party of God: Is Hezbollah a legitimate part of the Lebanese political system who might tone down its militant rhetoric if coaxed them into the political mainstream? Or is it an implacable fundamentalist group with a sophisticated fighting apparatus, an aggressive raison d’etre and accountability to no one except maybe the bellicose extremists ruling Iran?

These are tricky questions. Foreign governments have chosen to answer them in different ways, with consequent disagreement on the wisdom of the various approaches. Most obviously divergent have been the approaches of the United States and the United Kingdom, with the US remaining cool towards the party, the UK being more receptive to communication.

This British approach has included the announcement last month that in light of Hezbollah’s governmental participation, they would resume dialogue broken off in 2005 after the death of Rafik Hariri. Britain – unlike the US – now distinguishes between the political and military wings of the party, and will talk to politicians.

Hezbollah MP Hussein Hajj Hassan visited Britain last week, and met with Members of Parliament, saying that, “British public opinion has changed.”

But Al-Rai newspaper reported that US authorities made their displeasure at this clear to the British ambassador. Meantime, on Monday this week, an article in the Washington Post reported that the US military has focused its strategy on Hezbollah-style well-equipped forces, after the painful and surprising impact the group’s forces had on US ally Israel in the July War of 2006.

Hezbollah in its entirety is still considered a terrorist group by the US, and it is forbidden for US officials to talk to any representative. If the March 8 alliance, in which Hezbollah is the dominant faction, wins the June 7 elections, US Ambassador to Lebanon Michele Sison told An-Nahar daily that US aid to Lebanon would be re-evaluated.

But however divergent their approaches, international governments have common aims in their dealings with Hezbollah. Nadim Shehadi, of London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, said that dialogue was part of the drive - from the US, the UK and others - to engage with the Middle East. This has included overtures from the West to states like Syria and Iran, Hezbollah’s allies, overtures designed to stabilize the region’s volatile states and make militant groups less aggressive.

So, there are governments, and Lebanese, who would like Hezbollah to be less aggressive in their rhetoric and actions, for their ties to the Syrian and Iranian leaders who would use them as a proxy force to be loosened and for their weapons to be given back to their donors or placed under state control. And those who would change Hezbollah cannot decide whether to persuade or threaten the party.

But are they talking – or refusing to talk – to the right people? What do we know about Hezbollah? That it benefits vastly from foreign funding, sure. We know it has mighty weapons, and its leaders are charismatic and commanding. But, although it has supporters of all political and religious stripes, it is as powerful and influential as it is because of the passionate devotion it inspires among the majority of the country’s Shia community.

The party’s version of Shi’ism, which glorifies “martyrdom”, i.e. death as a consequence of conflict in the name of a divine cause, has been inculcated in most of Lebanon’s Shia. It is this that lends force to the party’s threats to Israel, other countries and to enemy political factions in Lebanon: Hezbollah can follow through their threats without fear of loss of popular support, because its supporters will support them no less if they feel the party’s actions are threatening their lives by dragging Lebanon into conflict.

The martyr posters in the streets re-confirm at every corner what an honor it is to die. The devotion of the Shia legitimizes Hezbollah and is the source of their strength as much as Iranian money or tanks.

Ex-Hezbollah member and academic Rami Ollaik, who is now standing for election independently, is eloquent on his views of the reasons that Hezbollah’s following is so strong. Before the 1970s, he said, the, “Shia community of Lebanon were not at the same distance from the state as the Sunni, Christian and Druze communities…they were underprivileged.” When Amal, a party which represented the Shia and their interests, was founded, “the Shia were…getting closer to the state, more education, development, economic status,” until they were roughly on a level with the other communities.

However, after Israeli forces entered Lebanon in 1982, the Islamic Republic of Iran intervened in the country and set up Hezbollah as a Shia resistance force. “Due to the instability,” said Ollaik, “the Shia were busy resisting the forces of Israel,” and the agenda to integrate into the state, “melted into the resistance and the bigger project of Hezbollah.”

Hezbollah’s military successes, said Ollaik, gave them leverage in the country, and the Shia saw the party as a powerful force to represent them. The distance between Hezbollah and the Lebanese state increased over the years, he went on, to the party’s advantage. And while once the disadvantaged Shia community turned to the party as a powerful representative, he now says that it is the party’s program of “education, indoctrination,” that makes its supporters loyal to the point of embracing death.

Timur Goksel, for more than 20 years UNIFIL’s security adviser, put it pithily, “Hezbollah has taken on this role as this Shia identity,” he said. “If you want people,” he went on, “to reduce their attachment to Hezbollah, you need to address their concerns…and the Shia have always gotten a raw deal.”

This can be done, said Ollaik, in a number of ways, political and civil. Politically, It is the March 14 coalition who would, realistically, have the power to disentangle the Shia community and identity from Hezbollah. They would, he said, have done well to embrace the independent Shia politicians who are (often despite attacks from Hezbollah supporters) candidates for the upcoming elections, increasing their chances of election by including them on the March 14 lists. This was deemed politically too risky by March 14, a decision seen by many to have alienated non-Hezbollah Shia who could have had a real impact on the community.

However, in civil terms too, he said, there is fertile ground for change. “You find a lot of people who are by no means religious or support Hezbollah’s doctrines,” he said. Groups like the European Union, USAID, other Arab countries should, look to, “the young,” and “the calls and voices which don’t have a chance at speaking out because of the monopoly of foreign money.” Rather than trying to influence elite, intellectual independent Shia, those looking to separate the community’s identity from Hezbollah’s rhetoric should look for grassroots change.

“There should,” he said, “ be a new, solid, genuine project on an intellectual, educational, religious, economic level inside the community.”

Hezbollah has, for nearly three decades, influenced Lebanon’s Shia beyond measure. If the Lebanese state and its supporters empowered the Shia as the Hezbollah only pretends to, the time for the people to influence the party could come.