{"id":33263,"date":"2019-02-26T05:23:36","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T05:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33263"},"modified":"2019-02-26T05:23:36","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T05:23:36","slug":"how-a-uk-ban-would-impact-hezbollah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33263","title":{"rendered":"How a UK ban would impact Hezbollah"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nDUBAI:\u00a0 A UK ban on Hezbollah, outlawing the entire Lebanon-based group as a terrorist organization, can\u2019t come soon enough for regional political analysts.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt is better late than never,\u201d said Dr. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a former chairman of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, who is based in the UAE. \u201cIt\u2019s about time that a country like the UK recognized that Hezbollah is nothing but an extension of Iran, the number one country financing terrorism\u00a0 in the region.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThis has taken a long time, but it is great that Britain is now leading Europe. Hopefully, other European countries will follow suit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe UK outlawed Hezbollah\u2019s military wing in 2008, but the ban now will extend to its political arm. Authorities said they are no longer able to distinguish between the group\u2019s military and political wings.<\/p>\n

\nUnder the changes, supporting Hezbollah will be an offense carrying a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.\"\"<\/p>\n

\nThe decision follows outrage over the display of the Hezbollah flag, which features a Kalashnikov assault rifle, at pro-Palestinian rallies in London.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe UK had this problem in trying to distinguish between the military wing of Hezbollah and the political wing of Hezbollah,\u201d Abdulla said. \u201cBut everybody has recognized that one feeds into the other, and the military wing is the other face of the political wing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHezbollah\u2019s military and political arms\u00a0 were \u201ctwo faces of the same coin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe group deserved its classification\u00a0 as a terrorist organization, as many Arab and Gulf states had already recognized. \u201cIt is going to badly dent its reputation. It wanted to project itself as a national liberation movement, but now we have a major power saying it is nothing but a terrorist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAbdulla said the decision sent a signal to Iran as well since many countries were \u201cgetting ready\u201d to face up to Tehran\u2019s activities in the region. \u201cMuch of this activity is done through Hezbollah. Iran will be affected one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0The group is now a major political party in Lebanon, where it holds three Cabinet posts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cHezbollah is continuing its attempts to destabilize the fragile situation in the Middle East,\u201d UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid said. \u201cWe are no longer able to distinguish between their banned military wing and the political party. Because of this, I have taken the decision to proscribe the group in its entirety.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAccording to Dr. Albadr Al-Shateri, politics professor at the National Defense College in Abu Dhabi, the classification of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization will squeeze the party financially and limit its sympathizers\u2019 activities in the UK.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe long-term challenge is how to decommission Hezbollah as a militia and turn (it into) a political party. That can only happen if Israel is persuaded to relinquish the Lebanese-occupied territories in exchange for the decommissioning of Hezbollah.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHezbollah was established in 1982 during the Lebanese civil war and has been a Shiite militant movement since.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\"\"\u201cThis is inevitable in many ways for a country like Lebanon, it\u2019s the elephant in the room,\u201d said Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe British decision encourages (moves) to unify the Lebanese body of politics and to put the issue of Hezbollah to the test for the Lebanese people. No one knows if it will be possible \u2014 probably not \u2014 but there are two states within one and that is not always going to be beneficial to the Lebanese people because it creates contradictions and puts a group\u2019s agenda above the agenda of Lebanon as a country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe decision from London would keep that argument alive and fuel debate, Vatanka said.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI don\u2019t expect Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah\u2019s leader) will make something different tomorrow. It\u2019s the rest of Lebanese politics we can expect to react to this … because Hezbollah has formidable power in Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nWhether the decision amounts to anything more than a symbolic gesture, Vatanka believes only time will tell. \u201cThere has been a trend of governments within governments or competing governments. Iran was the first example followed by Lebanon, but it\u2019s a trend we might see elsewhere with militias in Syria and Iraq, and it\u2019s not a good trend for representation in Middle Eastern countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHe said Middle Eastern societies should have the discussion in their own countries first, but suggested foreign powers such as the UK could shape the debate by taking a stance. \u201cThis position has much to do with the nature of Hezbollah\u2019s activities as well,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s about the militant nature of Hezbollah.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe militant group has a long-standing association with crime and terror activities. In 1994, it carried out a suicide truck bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and wounding 300. Eighteen years later, it struck again, blowing up a bus carrying Israeli tourists at the airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, killing seven and wounding 32.<\/p>\n

\nIn 2006, the group captured two Israeli soldiers, sparking a 34-day war in which 1,200 people were killed. In 2009, Hezbollah came under attack again from the international community with claims of worldwide terrorism and political assassinations in Lebanon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nThe group has also denied accusations concerning its activities in Syria in early 2011, claiming it had no \u201cmilitary role in Arab countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nIn February 2016, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) implicated Hezbollah in a drug- trafficking and money-laundering network that spanned four continents. According to a DEA report, the group had links with South American drug cartels in a cocaine-smuggling operation in Europe and the US.<\/p>\n

\nThe proceeds funded a money- laundering scheme known as the Black Market Peso Exchange and provided Hezbollah with \u201ca revenue and weapons stream.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DUBAI:\u00a0 A UK ban on Hezbollah, outlawing the entire Lebanon-based group as a terrorist organization, can\u2019t come soon enough for regional political analysts. \u201cIt is better late than never,\u201d said Dr. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a former chairman of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, who is based in the UAE. \u201cIt\u2019s about time that a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":33264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}