Freedom fighters or terrorists?

European diplomats in Beirut regularly meet with Hizbullah's leadership. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan even drove into Hizbullah's stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut in June last year to meet with the party's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.

Edward Walker, president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute, says that while no one disagrees that civilians have been attacked by Palestinian groups subject to the executive order, such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas, Hizbullah's case is more "complicated."

"They have [attacked civilians] in the past," Mr. Walker says. "What their [terrorist] activity is now, I don't know. The State Department still seems to think that they are engaged [in civilian attacks] - that's what they say. But they haven't given any evidence."

Walker, a former US ambassador to Israel, was in Lebanon as part of a fact-finding tour of the Middle East. The Monitor accompanied him to the mountainous Shebaa Farms front line in south Lebanon.

The US does not recognize Lebanon's claim to the Shebaa Farms and condemns Hizbullah's attempts to drive Israeli troops from the area. But Walker concedes that Hizbullah's occasional hit-and-run attacks in the farms were directed solely at military targets.

"What I see Hizbullah having done is to fire at Israeli troops and not fire at civilians," he says. "You can argue about Shebaa and whether it's a legitimate target or not ... but it's not global terrorism, and it's not against civilians. So it does not fit into the categorization that the president has made."

Proof is required, Walker says, if any group is to be accused of terrorism. "The State Department ... should indicate what it is that Hizbullah has been doing" to warrant inclusion on the list.

Walker is not alone in noting the ambiguity of Hizbullah's terrorist classification. Earlier this year, the British government passed new antiterrorism legislation, which resulted in its first-ever list of terrorist groups. The British, however, distinguished between Hizbullah, the political party, which maintains an armed wing, and what it called Hizbullah's External Security Organization. The ESO was a name devised by the British under which to lump all the terrorist acts of the 1980s that have been associated with Hizbullah.

A European diplomat acknowledged that the ESO was created simply as a device to confer legitimacy on Hizbullah's mainstream political activities.

"Is there any proof that the ESO actually exists? No," he says.

But the distinction leaves open the possibility of dialogue between London and Hizbullah without compromising Britain's new antiterrorism laws.

Mr. Qassir, the Hizbullah member of parliament, says the organization was created in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and not as a means to attack the West.

"There was no Hizbullah before the Israeli invasion," he says. "Our resistance will stop when the Zionist terrorism stops."

Qassir also says that US interests in the Middle East are being undermined by Washington's support for Israel.

"Arabs do not have any hostility against the American people, and we want them to live in peace," he says. "But America's support for the Zionist entity is exacting a high price. It's raising hostility among Arabs."

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