WASHINGTON – Fiamma Nirenstein, vice president of the Foreign Affairs Committee
of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, has submitted a resolution to the committee
urging Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi Sant’Agata to push to outlaw
Hezbollah.
The move comes as discussions are being held among the 27 EU
member countries about placing the Lebanese Shi’ite group on its list of
terrorist organizations.
The Jerusalem Post obtained a copy last week of
the draft resolution, which was formulated in late November, and is slated to be
voted on by the Foreign Affairs Committee. It calls on Italy’s Foreign Ministry
“to act within the European framework in order to include the Hezbollah movement
in the international terrorism list of the European Union.”
The
resolution bases the call to blacklist Hezbollah on a number of factors,
including the July 18 bus attack in the seaside resort of Burgas, Bulgaria,
which killed five Israeli tourists and their Bulgarian bus driver, and wounded
32 other Israelis. American and Israeli intelligence officials attributed the
explosion to a joint Iran-Hezbollah operation.
She added, however, that
there has been documented Hezbollah terrorist activity in the past, and “this
action is even more urgent in the light of Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian
crisis, which is a threat for the stability of the whole Middle Eastern
region.”
The United States government, which has listed Hezbollah as a
terrorist entity since 1995, earlier this year sanctioned key leaders of
Hezbollah for aiding the Assad regime in attacking pro-democracy activists in
Syria.
Nirenstein’s resolution cites Hezbollah’s attacks in 1983 on
American and French troops in Lebanon, which killed 241 US Marines and 58 French
paratroopers. The resolution also cites Hezbollah’s involvement in “1984 in a
bombing at a restaurant near the US Air Force Base in Torrejon, Spain, which
killed 18 US servicemen and injured 83, and in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight
847, during which US Navy diver Robert Stethem was killed [after being beaten
and tortured, in Beirut].”
The document notes Hezbollah’s “1992 attack on
the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which claimed 29 dead and over 290 wounded,
and the 1994 attack on the headquarters of the Asociacion Mutual Israelita
[community center] in Buenos Aires which killed 85 people and injured more than
300.”
The resolution continues, “Hezbollah repeatedly defies UN
Resolution 1701 (2006), which calls for the disarmament of all armed groups in
Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese Army and bans the presence of Hezbollah
proxies in south Lebanon.
"Currently the Party of God [Hezbollah] has over
13,500 soldiers and in October 2006 Hezbollah said it possessed an arsenal of
33,000 rockets, including Iranian-made Fajr missiles, (with a range of 45 km.),
Zelzal-2s (with a range of 200-400 km., capable of carrying a 600-kg. warhead),
Scud ballistic missiles, Katyusha rockets and anti-ship
missiles. Furthermore, according to the US Counter-terrorism Bureau, Iran
provided Hezbollah with unmanned aerial vehicles such as the
Mohajer-4.”
Hezbollah’s activities meet the EU’s definition of terrorism,
according to the resolution.
“The European Union defines terrorist groups
as those perpetrating deliberate acts, which given their nature or the context,
may seriously damage a country or an international organization by intimidating
a population, exerting undue compulsion of various types or by destabilizing or
destroying its fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social
structures,” the resolution states.
Nirenstein added: “In 2003, Italy
played a crucial role in the decision to include Hamas in the list of the
terrorist organizations of the European Union.”