Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor called on the Security Council to express its opposition to Hezbollah’s recent moves to amass arms.
According to the letter to the 15-member council, the Lebanese Shiite group now possesses an armoury of tens of thousands of missiles capable of targeting Israeli territory.
Invoking last week’s explosion in southern Lebanon close to the Israeli border, for which Israel holds Hezbollah responsible, Prosor wrote that the attack offered e another reminder to the world about the grave danger before our eyes in Lebanon”.
The UN current extends an arms embargo on Lebanon, but Israel claims that Hezbollah, which it labels a proxy of Iran, that Hezbollah has been able to amass 50,000 missiles, “more weapons than many NATO members have in their possession”, in spite of these restrictive measures.
Calling for an oral condemnation of Hezbollah’s apparent rearmament, coupled with more “concrete steps on the ground”, Prosor concluded that “a logical first step is to ensure that Hezbollah is placed on all relevant terrorism watchlists in all corners of the globe, including the European Union”.
Last week, the US State Department coordinator for counterterrorism described himself “cautiously optimistic2 about the likelihood of the EU complying with close Israeli ally America’s calls for it to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. The US outlawed the militant group in 1997, following a raft of attacks on US targets for which it claimed responsibility throughout the 1980s.
"We’ve been engaging with our partners in Europe and we are cautiously optimistic – at last – about the prospects for an EU designation of the group," Benjamin said in an address to the Brookings Institute.
However in July, in response to direct pleas to instigate such a course of action by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the annual meeting of the EU-Israel Association Council in Brussels, the current Cypriot presidency of the EU insisted there was "no consensus" for such a decision among the 27 member states. The EU argument was that Hezbollah is a "political organisation" comprising a party as well as an armed wing and that it is "active in Lebanese politics" -- with representatives in the government and in parliament.
EU member states the Netherlands and Britain both advocate an EU-wide ban of some description of the group, with Holland having designated the group as a whole as a terrorist organisation since 1994, and Britain differentiating between its political and military arms, outlawing only the militant wing, an action it calls for the EU to replicate. Historic ally France is crucially thought to be the principal opponent of any such course of action, however.