the fruit of a lengthy diplomatic, legal and intelligence campaign.
The European Union's decision to list Hezbollah's military wing as a
terrorist organization is the fruit of a lengthy diplomatic, legal and
intelligence campaign waged jointly by Israel, Britain, the United
States, the Netherlands and Canada. A cache of bombs discovered in
Nazareth, a 150-page legal document, and dozens of secret visits and
phone calls to various leaders were among the key factors contributing
to the decision.
The campaign began after the bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria, last July,
which killed five Israeli tourists and one Bulgarian. As intelligence
indicating that Hezbollah was to blame accumulated, the Foreign
Ministry decided the time was ripe for action.
To this end, it set up a special task force, headed by the ministry's
Deputy Director General Jeremy Issacharoff and Shai Cohen, head of the
Regional Security and Counterterrorism Department. The team also
included representatives of the National Security Council, the Defense
Ministry and the intelligence agencies. Similar task forces were set
up by Britain's Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department.
One of the task force's first moves was giving various EU countries
masses of intelligence that Israel had collected - not just about
Hezbollah's role in the Burgas attack, but also about its involvement
in Syria's civil war, money laundering, drug smuggling and setting up
sleeper cells in Europe. Unusually, the intelligence agencies agreed
to this massive transfer of sensitive information.
A senior Foreign Ministry official said that, among other things,
Israel passed on intelligence showing that Hezbollah was fighting
alongside President Bashar Assad's regime in Syria in early 2013,
before this became publicly known.
Israel also gave Berlin information about the assets and bank accounts
of 950 Lebanese Shi'ites living in Germany who were suspected of being
sleeper agents, or of involvement in transferring money to Hezbollah
and helping it with logistics. Similar information was given to Spain,
France and Italy.
One move that ultimately proved critical was Israel's decision,
immediately after the Burgas attack, to send a forensics team to help
investigate.
The Burgas probe, in which the United States, Britain, Germany, Canada
and Australia also participated, convinced the Bulgarian government to
announce in February 2013 that Hezbollah's military wing was behind
the attack.
One key piece of evidence was the large number of phone calls between
Burgas and various locations in Lebanon associated with Hezbollah,
including calls from phone numbers known to belong to Hezbollah
operatives. Another was the forged American driver's license used by
one member of the three-man cell, which was traced back to a Beirut
printer affiliated with Hezbollah.
The smoking gun, though, was the bomb's composition, including the
specific type of plastic explosive used - which proved identical to
the composition of 24 bombs discovered by Israeli security services in
Nazareth in August 2012. These bombs had been smuggled into the
country at Hezbollah's behest by a group of drug smugglers. Later, the
bomb's composition also proved an exact match to bombs discovered by
Thailand's security services in January 2012, at a warehouse owned by
a Hezbollah operative in Bangkok.
The Burgas investigation also uncovered the three perpetrators'
identities, but this information was kept secret. The senior Foreign
Ministry official said the men are hiding in southern Lebanon, and
that Israel is searching for them.
From the start, the ministry official said, the task force knew the
biggest obstacle would be translating the accumulated intelligence
about Hezbollah into evidence that would stand up in a European court.
Several EU countries, first and foremost Germany, said they wouldn't
support listing Hezbollah as a terrorist organization unless they were
sure their domestic courts wouldn't overturn the decision for lack of
evidence.
Consequently, the task force put together a 150-page document
detailing all the evidence, as well as its legal significance.
"We didn't just collect all the relevant material for them; we also
linked it to European legislation and various [legal] precedents," the
official said.
After months of work, the document was completed in May. It was given
first to Germany, which at that time was wavering. A few days after
the document was hand delivered to Germany's interior minister,
members of the task force gave a four-hour briefing to German
officials with additional intelligence material.
A week later, on May 22, Germany announced it was ready to blacklist
Hezbollah's military wing. This decision convinced several other
wavering countries that the evidence was truly solid.
With the legal obstacle surmounted, it was time for the diplomatic
campaign to begin.
About six weeks ago, the Foreign Ministry gave all EU ambassadors a
detailed briefing on the matter, and Israeli ambassadors in Europe
were instructed to do the same for the highest-level officials they
could reach - generally, foreign ministers, prime ministers or
presidents.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres also made
personal phone calls to the leaders of wavering states, such as
Austria, many of which voiced fears that listing Hezbollah as a
terrorist organization would destabilize Lebanon and make Hezbollah
even more extreme.
"We argued that Hezbollah was already destabilizing Lebanon by its
involvement in the Syrian war, its ties with Iran and its possession
of tens of thousands of rockets," and that blacklisting it would
actually "weaken its power in Lebanon," the senior Foreign Ministry
official explained.
Thus, in their calls to countries like Austria, Malta, Greece and
Slovakia, Netanyahu and Peres stressed both the Burgas attack and
Hezbollah's involvement in Syria.
Washington also exerted heavy diplomatic pressure. U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry and Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy
Sherman made calls to dozens of senior European officials in recent
weeks.
Now that the EU has finally made the decision in principle, the next
step is for each member state to enact appropriate legislation, and
then to start enforcing it. In theory, blacklisting Hezbollah's
military wing means that its money and assets in Europe will be
frozen, Europeans will be barred from doing business with it, and its
operatives will be denied visas to Europe.
The difficulty, however, lies in distinguishing between its military
and political wings, and determining which assets or operatives belong
to each. That is why Netanyahu stressed that though Israel welcomes
the EU move, it remains opposed to this distinction.
Copyright http://www.haaretz.com/
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