Part of this international hesitancy stems from Hezbollah’s social popularity in Lebanon and its participation in Lebanese politics as a powerful actor. Countries – like France – believe that by proscribing Hezbollah and cutting their channel of communications with the group, they risk destabilizing its host state, Lebanon. As a result, some such countries have created a fictitious compartmentalization of the group into various “wings” – a political vs. military wing, or even subdivided the latter into a domestic resistance branch vs. international terror branch – and designated only what they deemed the problematic element of the group.

Hezbollah itself rejects this artificial compartmentalization, describing itself as one symbiotic body – where the political and the military are different means to accomplish the same ends – and acting accordingly. Increasingly, countries once hesitant to fully ban Hezbollah, like the United Kingdom or Germany, have come to terms with this reality and banned the group in its entirety. Others, however, like France, Australia, and the European Union, have yet to follow suit, despite the corrosive effect on Lebanon of Hezbollah’s political participation becoming increasingly obvious.