Israel welcomes EU's decision to blacklist Hezbollah

Israeli officials on Monday welcomed the European Union's decision to blacklist the Hezbollah' s military wing as a terrorist organization. "We have invested a lot of efforts in the past several years to explain to the European Union states that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization operating on behalf of the Iranian regime which conducts attacks all over the world," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Monday following the decision at the EU headquarters in Brussels. "I welcome the European Union's decision and I hope that the implementation of the decision would lead to actual steps against the organization," Netanyahu said. "Thousands of members of this organization take part in the massacre in Syria and the organization has tens of thousands of rockets aimed at communities across Israel," the Israeli prime minister added. In another statement, Israeli President Shimon Peres welcomed the EU's decision and called it "a significant and necessary step" against terrorism across the globe. Peres said that the decision sends "a clear message" to terror organizations and countries which harbor them that "their murderous actions will not be tolerated." The Shi'ite organization in Lebanon has been a sworn-enemy of Israel since its establishment and the animosity became a full- fledged war in 2006, dubbed as the Second Lebanon War. Last week, Israel faced a diplomatic crisis following another EU's decision, which stipulates that any agreements between EU member states and Israel won't apply to occupied territories in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, indicating that the EU does not acknowledge these territories as part of Israel.