Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal vowed to recommend that the European Union blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist organization - a move that could impact the Lebanese group's freedom of movement and activity in Europe.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has been pushing for Hezbollah to be added to the European list of terror organizations since the deadly terrorist attack in Burgas, Bulgaria in July that killed five Israeli tourists and a local driver, and left 30 others wounded.
A week following the attack, Lieberman told a conference of foreign ministers in Brussels that it was "time to add Hezbollah to the list of terrorist organizations in Europe, as a message from the international community to those who on the one hand meet with diplomats and on the other hand murder innocent civilians in the same continent."
However, current EU President Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis of Cyprus said the EU would not comply with the request since "Hezbollah is a political party in Lebanon which also runs charity organizations."
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi in Jerusalem, and said Europe could do more to advance peace and security by declaring Hezbollah, Iran's proxy, a terrorist organization.
Netanyahu told Terzi that Hezbollah was the "largest terrorist organization in the world and Europe can contribute a lot by making that declaration."
Rosenthal said that it was the worrying reports of Hezbollah's involvement in the ongoing violence in Syria that was one of the reasons that prompted him to support blacklisting the Lebanese organization.
Dutch Ambassador to Israel Caspar Veldkamp said Thursday that Holland had classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization as early as 2008 after noting that the group had its own military wing.