“The European Union is going to decide this week on whether to designate the Lebanese group Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. There is no doubt that it carries out terror attacks targeting innocent civilians within Israel and elsewhere. The most recent was an attack last year on tourists in Bulgaria, which Bulgarian officials have stated was carried out by Hezbollah. The decision to designate it as a terrorist organisation should therefore be obvious. However, European hesitation to declare it as a terrorist group appears to have stemmed from the fact that it is also a political party in Lebanon. This is a mistake.

While Hezbollah is indeed a terrorist organisation, operated by Iran in Lebanon, and a political party, it is ultimately headed by one leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who makes political and terror-related decisions alike.

This ‘dualist strategy’ is not unique to Hezbollah. The free world is frequently exploited by terrorist organisations seeking to cynically use democratic processes in order to infiltrate political systems. Another terrorist organisation that gained power in this way within the Palestinian Authority is Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip. However, winning power through elections has not made these terrorist organisations any more moderate, as might perhaps have been hoped.”

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