After the EU’s foreign policy chief Solana met a Hezbollah leader last month, the French FM held talks with Hezbollah’s member of parliament. The British government also reached out to Hezbollah.
The European position is not especially abnormal. Many groups that once were considered terrorist, such as Mandela’s African National Congress, eventually moved onto the political scene and enjoyed international recognition.
Hezbollah has rarely acted as a terrorist group in a sense of attacking enemy civilians in covert operations.
Rare examples to the contrary, such as its attacks on Jewish civilian targets abroad, were acts of retaliation. Hezbollah’s cooperation with Palestinian terrorists does not make the Lebanese group terrorist, just as Iran and Syria, who also cooperate with Hamas, remain political entities rather than terrorist organizations.
Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon nine years ago Hezbollah is almost exclusively a political organizations with a legally sanctioned militia, and as such will certainly enter the European political process.
