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Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman but, to be honest, that is not something that I have reflected on in depth. I do not propose to explore that issue or ventilate my thoughts on it in this debate, but it is certainly an interesting question, and I am sure that the Minister will want to respond to it. As I was about to say, failure to proscribe an organisation that turns out to be violent and to have terrorist intent could threaten British citizens on our soil, but equally, proscribing an organisation mistakenly or inappropriately could tie up significant resources. The resources available to our security services are, of course, finite, and must be targeted properly. It is important to make that point. This is an important order, and Her Majesty's Opposition will not oppose it tonight. However, we need to understand the Minister's precise rationale for bringing it forward. I put my questions to him in a spirit of honest intellectual inquiry, but I repeat that Conservative Members do not oppose the order. It might be useful to recap some of Hezbollah's history, and to say how it comes about that we are debating the proscription of the whole of its military wing in this country. Hezbollah is a political and military organisation. The group was first formed in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The group's military wing, The Islamic Resistance, is believed to have between 500 and 600 full-time fighters—some estimates put the number considerably higher—and to be able to call on many more thousands of reserves. During the 2006 conflict in Lebanon, Hezbollah showed that it is armed with rockets that can reach into northern Israel. Hezbollah is known or suspected to have been involved in anti-western and anti-Israeli terrorist attacks, including the suicide truck bombings of the US embassy and the marines' barracks in Beirut in 1983, the bombing of the US embassy annexe in Beirut in September 1984, and the attacks on the Israeli embassy in Argentina in 1992 and on an Israeli cultural centre in that same country in 1994. In 2000, Hezbollah operatives captured three Israeli soldiers and kidnapped an Israeli non-combatant. Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre recently suggested that Hezbollah has a new, additional presence in Iraq, and on 16 April 2008, UN Security Council resolution 1701 was passed, calling for armed militia groups, including the likes of Hezbollah, to disarm. I turn briefly to this Government's history of proscribing parts of Hezbollah's military wing. In March 2001, the Hezbollah External Security Organisation, part of the broader military wing of Hezbollah, was added to the list of proscribed organisations under the Terrorism Act 2000. The order before us, which was laid before Parliament on 2 July, proscribes the military wing of Hezbollah in its entirety; that is the change to which we are invited to accede today. The military wing of Hezbollah includes the Jihad Council and all units reporting to it, including the Hezbollah External Security Organisation.