Hezbollah has a manifesto and a dual political-military structure. It is not an irregular group of desperate and mindless terrorists like Al Qaeda. It is recognized as a resistance movement in most of the Arab world and credited with forcing out Israeli forces from Lebanon. However, and unlike all Palestinian organizations (PLO and Fatah), it boasts a noticeable track record of tangibly improving living conditions for its constituents. Thus it can feed its base of support at home even amongst other ethnic groups in Lebanon.

Hezbollah delivered all functions that the Lebanese government ought to have delivered: roads, infrastructure, schools and hospitals as well as providing garbage collection, town councils and a social health system in the poorest parts of Lebanon. It has built four main hospitals, twelve clinics, twelve schools, farming training centres and a health insurance scheme for a population base of about 1.1 million people. This would make any politician envious. It has created factories and jobs for the population, fielded successful candidates in elections and formed a political coalition with the Amal (pro-Shiite) Party in Lebanon named "Resistance and Development". Hezbollah has shown its political maturity and a focus of purpose after its aim of driving foreign forces from Lebanon.

The Lebanese political turf is a confessionalist system where power, institutions and controls of institutions are divided proportionally in accordance to the spread of ethnic and religious communities, and not the merits of a political doctrine. Notwithstanding this, more than 75% of non-Shiite Lebanese polled support Hezbollah in the current conflict. The rest of the Lebanese political class outside Hezbollah are hard-pressed these days to explain the lack of a basic national army to defend Beirut and Lebanon from air and sea attacks while Hezbollah's civilian track record justifies its armed wing.

While Lebanon is trying to sort out its problems, others in poor Arab countries cannot help but wonder about their own regimes and their return on political investments. No other Arab regime in direct conflict with Israel has expelled foreign forces from its territory and has upgraded social services to its population.

The rise of religious politics and conservative parties in Egypt, Iraq and Algeria (and even the mild religious conservative AK Party in Turkey) are unmistakable signals of movement in the same direction as the political activism of religious zealots in Israel, Eastern Europe and North America. Hezbollah's civil management plans may not scale up in poor Arab countries with large populations (such as Egypt, Algeria or Yemen), but people in the Palestinian Territories, Libya or perhaps Jordan may wonder whether local governors with their secular falsehoods are inseparably entwined in corruption and ineptitude. The region, like much of the world, will dismiss the West's simplified labels and realize Hezbollah for what it is -- a Lebanese grassroots movement.