As countries join the United Nations mission meant to bolster the cease-fire in south Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, the European Union continues to block implementation of one of its own counterterrorism programs aimed at breaking official ties with terrorist groups and seizing any European-based terrorist assets.
Even in the wake of Hezbollah rocket attacks that killed dozens of Israeli civilians and sent hundreds of thousands into shelters or fleeing northern Israel this summer, the 25-member EU has yet to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the EU instituted a host of counterterrorism measures. One of the more important ones was establishing a definition of terror acts and a subsequent list of terrorist entities - groups and individuals operating on and outside EU soil. The EU's list mirrors the long-standing lists of the U.S. State and Treasury departments that are used to identify terrorists and prevent fundraising on U.S. soil, among other uses. Notable on the EU's inaugural list were the military wing of Hamas and Imad Mughniyah, widely known as Hezbollah's operations chief.
Before 9/11, Hezbollah was responsible for killing more Americans than any other terrorist organization. The State Department has considered Hezbollah a terror group for more than 20 years.
In 2003, CIA Director George J. Tenet testified before Congress that "Hezbollah, as an organization with capability and worldwide presence, is equal, if not a far more capable organization" than al-Qaida.
The EU's classifying of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization would recognize its destructive ability not only against Americans and Israelis but also against Europeans. In 1983, Hezbollah bombed the French and U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 58 French soldiers and 241 Marines. The organization is also blamed for carrying out a wave of attacks in Paris in 1985 and 1986 that killed 13 and injured hundreds.
In 2003, the EU finally realized, after a series of Hamas suicide bombings in Israel, that it could no longer separate Hamas' armed wing from its supposed political and social units, and thus designated the whole organization a terrorist group. In 2002, the EU added two more Hezbollah members to its terror list. France, with long-standing ties in the Middle East, banned the broadcast of al-Manar, Hezbollah's hate-spewing television station, in late 2004, well ahead of the Treasury Department's labeling the station a terrorist entity this year. Yet the EU, principally under pressure from France, continues to resist efforts to classify any part of Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
