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[COLOR="green"][SIZE="4"][FONT="Arial Black"][B]Hezbollah[/B][/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]

Lebanese Shi'ite Islamist organization. Founded in southern Lebanon in 1982 as a response to Israel's invasion there, its original goals were to drive Israeli troops out of Lebanon and form a Shi'ite Islamic republic similar to that created by the Iranian revolution of 1979. Its political stance, in the main, has been anti-Western, and its members have been implicated in many of the terrorist activities that were perpetrated in Lebanon during the 1980s, including kidnappings, car bombings, and airline hijackings, a number of which were directed at U.S. citizens. It has purportedly received strong material support from Syria and Iran and throughout the 1990s engaged in an intensive guerrilla campaign against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. At the same time, Hezbollah actively aided the long disfranchised Shi'ite community in Lebanon, providing social services not offered by the government. In the 1990s the party's candidates won seats in Lebanon's parliamentary elections, and the group's leaders have since sought to soften its earlier image. Despite a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon in 2000, the party continued sporadic attacks across the Lebanese-Israeli border.
[COLOR="Blue"][B][SIZE="3"][FONT="Arial Black"]
Relationship with Hamas[/FONT][/SIZE][/B][/COLOR]

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, suggested that the Hezbollah operation might provide a way out of the crisis in Gaza because Israel had negotiated with Hezbollah indirectly in the past although it is refusing to negotiate with Hamas now. He said that the only way the soldiers would be returned would be through a prisoner exchange. Although Hezbollah and Hamas are not organizationally linked, Hezbollah has acted in some ways as a mentor or role model for Hamas, which has sought to emulate the Lebanese group’s political and media success. Hamas’s kidnaping of the Israeli soldier follows a different Hezbollah example. Hezbollah reportedly also has provided terrorist training for Hamas, and the two groups share the goal of driving Israel from occupied territories and ultimately from Israel proper; both maintain close ties with Iran.[111]

According to an Israeli military source, Hezbollah assists Hamas with bomb production : "They know how to make them more concentrated, what kind of screw to use, how to pack more explosives into less space."[112]

[COLOR="blue"][SIZE="3"][FONT="Arial Black"][B]International recognition[/B][/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]

As a legitimate political entity
Hezbollah is regarded by the Lebanese[75], Iranian[113] and Syrian[114] and some other Islamic governments as a legitimate resistance, a view common in the Arab and Muslim world[6][115].

Foreign governments declining to characterize the group as terrorist include Russia, who released its list in the midst of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict,[116] and the European Union [117].

The UN’s Deputy Secretary-General, Mark Malloch Brown, has stated that that while “Hezbollah employs terrorist tactics,”[118] it is unhelpful to call it a terrorist organization; the United States and the international community, in his view, would do well to respect it as a legitimate political party.[20].

[COLOR="blue"][SIZE="3"][FONT="Arial Black"][B]As a terrorist organization[/B][/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]

Six nations or supranational entities have deemed part or all of Hezbollah a terrorist organization:

List of entities designating Hezbollah as terrorist.

Entity Type of Designation Reference United States The organization Hezbollah in full. [119]
Canada The organization Hezbollah in full [120]
Israel The organization Hezbollah in full [121]
United Kingdom The Hezbollah External Security
Organization [122]
Netherlands The Hezbollah External Security
Organization [123][124]
Australia The Hezbollah External Security
Organization [125]
European Union No organizational listing, but does list
Hezbollah's senior intelligence officer
- Imad Mugniyah. [126][127][128]

On the other hand, Hezbollah has disclaimed the use of some terrorist tactics, particularly those that result in the deaths of innocent people. For example, although the group first became known for pioneering the use of suicide bombings in the region, its clerics have never been entirely comfortable with the tactic.[129] Hezbollah has not directly participated in suicide bombings since the 1990s.[citation needed]

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Hezbollah condemned Al Qaeda for targeting the civilian World Trade Center, though it remained silent on the attack on the Pentagon, presumably considering it a legitimate military target.[130] It denounced Armed Islamic Group massacres in Algeria, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya attacks on tourists in Egypt[131], and the murder of Nick Berg[132]. In 2006, on the matter of ongoing violence in Baghdad, Nasrallah condemned attacks on “American tourists, or intellectuals, doctors, or professors who have nothing to do with this [Iraqi] war,” calling the targeting of such civilians “not acceptable.”[133]

[COLOR="blue"][SIZE="3"][FONT="Arial Black"][B]Specific allegations of terrorism[/B][/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]

Hezbollah is believed by the United States and some other countries' intelligence agencies to have kidnapped and tortured to death U.S. Marine Colonel William R. Higgins and the CIA station chief in Beirut, William Francis Buckley, [134] and to have kidnapped around 30 other Westerners between 1982 and 1992, including U.S. journalist Terry Anderson, British journalist John McCarthy, the Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy Terry Waite and Irish citizen Brian Keenan.[135] Hezbollah was accused by the US government of being responsible for the April 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63; of being behind the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, a suicide truck bombing that killed 241 U.S. marines in their barracks in Beirut in October 1983; of bombing the replacement U.S. Embassy in East Beirut on September 20, 1984, killing 20 Lebanese and two U.S. soldiers; and of carrying out the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome. These accusations are denied by Hezbollah.[136]

The U.S. claims Hezbollah carried out two Argentine terrorist attacks in the early 1990s: the 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people, and an attack two years later on a Jewish community center there, killing 85.[137][138] Hezbollah denies these claims.[139][140]

On July 26, 1994, eight days after the community center bombing, the Israeli Embassy in London was car bombed by two Palestinians. United Kingdom, Israel and Argentina blamed Hezbollah for the attack.[141]

[COLOR="Blue"][SIZE="3"][FONT="Arial Black"][B]Intelligence capabilities[/B][/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]

According to Israeli and American pro-Israeli sources, Hezbollah has three units charged with intelligence operations.

One unit is responsible for intelligence activities against Israel, primarily by recruiting and running agents in order to gather information about Israeli military bases and other potential targets. It is claimed that this unit also gathers information on behalf of Iran [citation needed], and is also known to conduct SIGINT operations against IDF communications [94].

Preventive Security is the organization's internal security formation, and is responsible for counter-intelligence and communication security, as well as operating its prisons and interrogation centers.

According to Michael Eisenstadt, of the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Hezbollah also has a unit called Unit 1800 which aids Palestinians engaged in their operations, by providing funding, direction, weapons, and bomb-building instructions

[COLOR="Blue"][SIZE="3"][FONT="Arial Black"][B]Media operations[/B][/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]

Hezbollah operates a satellite television station from Lebanon, Al-Manar TV ("the Lighthouse") as well as a radio station, al-Nour ("the light"). Kabdat Alla ("The Fist of God") is the monthly magazine of Hezbollah's paramilitary wing.

Al Manar broadcasts news in Arabic, English, French and Hebrew and is widely watched both in Lebanon and in other Arab countries. Its transmission in France (even via satellite, not by any station based on French territory) is controversial. It has been accused of promoting religious and racial hatred (against Jews), which is a criminal offense in France. On December 13, 2004, the French Conseil d'État, acting on the request of the French TV authorities, issued an injunction to Eutelsat to cease the broadcasting of Al Manar in France.[70]

The Hezbollah Central Internet Bureau in 2003 released a Video Game[71] titled Special Force, intended to simulate Arab-Israeli conflicts from an Arab perspective.

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