The flag of Hezbollah flies in Syria, where Hezbollah has become an active element in a civil war that has claimed the lives of 80,000 people. Photo: Hezbollah Flag/Wikimedia Commons.

Residents of southern Lebanon, the regional seat of terror group Hezbollah, don’t seem too concerned that the European Union’s recent blacklisting of the terrorist organization will affect how it operates, Lebanon’s  English-language Daily Star reports.

One young resident of the area, which is so devoted to Hezbollah that it features roads flanked by the terror group’s flag, reiterated what Israeli politicians have been arguing all along: that there is no distinction between the group’s military wing and the rest of the organization.

“It’s a joke – a stupid one,” Mohammad Awada told The Daily Star. “There is no such thing as the military wing of Hezbollah. There is Hezbollah and there is the resistance, but everyone works under the name of Hezbollah.”

He said many people were joking  sarcastically by text message and on social media that Hezbollah members had all fled to their villages in fear after news of the EU’s decision broke.

Another resident dismissed the EU move as being gratuitous. “All the roosters want to rule the barnyard,” Hajj Ahmad Saleh, a resident of Ramaya, told the paper. “The whole world had already said their piece about Hezbollah, so the European Union had to chime in.”

The Daily Star writes that the vast majority of the people in the area are of one mind when it comes to the EU decision, that is, in the words of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, “They might as well tile the sea.”

Others saw the decision as a desperate move or even an “Israeli-American” decision that revealed the weakness of the Jewish state.

“This is the decision of someone who is fighting on a lame horse,” Ali Halawi told The Daily Star, standing in his field, laughing.

In the nearby village of Kfar Kila overlooking Israel, Fatima Sheet said the EU can “soak their decision in water and drink it,” also echoing the words of Nasrallah.

“The leader of the resistance said it and I’ll say it again: This decision is meaningless.”