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Why the EU Blacklisted Hizbullah's Military Wing But Not Hizbullah Itself
(TIME) Karl Vick - Last October, Hizbullah's second-in-command, Naim Qassem, declared in Beirut: "We don't have a military wing and a political one." Under EU rules, all 28 member states would have to agree to designate Hizbullah a terrorist organization, and it was clear that not all would. So a compromise was found. Benedetta Berti, an expert on Hizbullah at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, noted, "with Hamas there was the same distinction drawn between the military wing and the political wing....At the peak of the Second Intifada the EU decided the distinction wasn't valid anymore and combined the two."