Germany’s parliament is to debate a proposal to ban the activities of Hezbollah there. Introduced by the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, it accuses the Islamist group of leading a "terrorist fight against Israel.”

The AfD bill, scheduled for debate in the Bundestag on Thursday, was announced earlier this week at an AfD press conference.

“Hezbollah must be banned in Germany,” said AfD deputy Beatrix von Storch, who helped to draft the bill. She deems the group to be a “terrorist organization” whose goal is the “destruction of Israel,” and noted that a number of other countries – including the US, UK and Israel – had already passed laws to prohibit or restrict its activities.

Short of an outright ban, the AfD bill suggests restrictions on Hezbollah’s legal rights in Germany, such as the removal of its status as a charity.

Hezbollah, or the “Party of God,” is a political and military organization that formed in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Southern Lebanon in the 1980s. The group has developed close ties with Iran and now operates in a number of countries outside Lebanon, raising funds and generating foreign support through networks of community centers and mosques.

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German intelligence has estimated that around 1,050 Hezbollah members and supporters were active in the EU country in 2018, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Hezbollah’s military wing, nominally separate from its political party, was added to the European Union terrorism blacklist in 2013, but von Storch challenged the distinction between the group’s armed and its civil elements.

“The Berlin government claims you must distinguish between a legitimate, political wing of Hezbollah and a terrorist wing,” she said at the press conference. “This does not make sense to us, or the voters.”

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The AfD has long been a stalwart critic of “radical Islam” and of German immigration policies amid an ongoing refugee crisis – which party co-leader Alexander Gauland once branded an “Islamic invasion.”

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