Swiss parliament votes to outlaw Hezbollah
Rare motion for the neutral country passes the parliament’s lower chamber with 126 votes in favor, 20 against and 41 abstentions, despite government’s opposition to ban

Switzerland’s parliament on Tuesday voted to outlaw Hezbollah, in a rare move by the neutral country that has traditionally followed a policy of promoting international dialogue and mediation.
Proponents of the ban, which was passed by the lower house after receiving upper house approval last week, said Hezbollah was a threat to international security and that Switzerland needed to prohibit it to take a stand against terrorism.
The Swiss government opposed the ban after Switzerland’s Federal Council said that the Lebanese terror group could not be banned as a threat to security under the country’s intelligence act because the existing law required sanctions or a ban by the United Nations to be in place for such a move to be applied.
“If Switzerland now moves to ban such organizations with special laws, we must ask ourselves where and how the boundaries are drawn,” Justice Minister Beat Jans said during the parliamentary debate.
The ban nevertheless passed the lower house with 126 votes in favor, 20 against, and 41 abstentions.
The security policy committee that proposed the ban argued that Switzerland’s mediating role will remain intact thanks to a specific provision on peace talks and humanitarian aid.

Last week, the Swiss parliament outlawed Hamas over the Palestinian terror group’s October 7, 2023, terror onslaught in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and 251 were seized as hostages.
The government, which drafted the bill to outlaw Hamas, said it had done so in line with the practice of proscribing organizations on a case-by-case basis only “for extremely serious reasons.”
Switzerland had previously only banned al-Qaeda and Islamic State, which are on the United Nations’ list of terrorist organizations.
Hezbollah began launching cross-border attacks on Israel from Lebanon the day after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, firing rockets and drones at border communities and military posts, displacing some 60,000 Israelis from their homes in the country’s north.
Longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed in late September 2024, by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, as Israel escalated its campaign against Hezbollah, eventually launching a ground incursion into southern Lebanon.
In late November, the sides agreed to a ceasefire, which has broadly held, despite alleged violations of the truce by Hezbollah which Israel has responded to, saying that its retaliation is in line with the ceasefire agreement.
Sources close to Hezbollah say the terror group believes the number of its fighters killed by Israel in the last year could be as high as 4,000, the vast majority of them during the two months of intensified fighting. The sources cited previously unreported internal estimates.
Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel since October 2023 resulted in the deaths of 45 civilians. In addition, 80 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes, attacks on Israel, and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September.