Israeli leader urges EU to blacklist Hezbollah

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Israeli leader urges EU to blacklist Hezbollah

By Mario A. / September 6, 2012 / No Comments

By Andrew Rettman | EUobserver

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told Italy’s foreign minister the EU should designate Hezbollah as a terrorist entity. But EU diplomats are wary of the move.

“There is one … effort that I think Europe could make to advance the cause of security and peace, and that is to declare Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, a terrorist organisation. It is exactly that. It’s the world’s leading terror organisation, and Europe could contribute much by declaring it for what it is,” he said at a meeting with Italy’s Giulio Terzi in Jerusalem on Wednesday (5 September).

The statement is the latest in a campaign to EU-list the Lebanese group after Israel and the US blamed it for bombing Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria in July. Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman at the time asked Cyprus, the current EU presidency, to start talks on the decision.

US state department counter-terrorism chief, Daniel Benjamin, was in August cited in the New York Times as saying:

“We assess that Hezbollah could attack in Europe or elsewhere at any time with little or no warning.”

The American Jewish Congress (AJC), a Washington-based lobby with an office in the EU capital, last month also sent letters to EU foreign ministers pleading for the step. “No matter who carried out this atrocity [Burgas] on European Union territory, the EU’s continued refusal to put Hezbollah on its terror list is simply indefensible,” its Brussels chief, Daniel Schwammenthal, said in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal at the time.

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