Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah: We will hit Tel Aviv if Beirut is attacked

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah turned up the rhetoric against Israel on Friday at a mass rally in Beirut marking the third anniversary of the Second Lebanon War.

"Our position is that a unity government in which Hezbollah will be an effective player is urgently required. Hezbollah is able to hit every city in Israel, and I repeat: If they hit Beirut, we will attack Tel Aviv," he said. "We have two options. One is to succumb to Israel and let it call the shots in the region. The other is to be strong so that the Israelis would think a thousand times, even a million times, before they launch a war against Lebanon and Hezbollah. The option is ours."

Nasrallah also said the threats exchanged with Israel over the past few weeks did not necessarily point to a new conflict in the region.

"The Israeli threats are no more than psychological warfare," he said. "According to my knowledge of Israelis, when they jabber they are not to be feared. We should be vigilant when they are quiet like snakes."

Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the Lebanese government that it would be held responsible for any attacks on Israeli targets even if the attacks were carried out independently by Hezbollah. Nasrallah said Netanyahu's remarks were meant to influence domestic politics in Lebanon in the wake of June's general election, in which the pro-Syrian camp, of which Hezbollah is a key member, suffered a bitter defeat.

The Shi'ite leader quoted Netanyahu in the beginning of his speech. "Netanyahu, God bless him, has written that the Six-Day War was strategically important because it made Israel a fait accompli, and after the Yom Kippur War Arab leaders were convinced they should make peace with it. But the same Netanyahu now says that after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and the Second Lebanon War, Israel lost its deterrent power, and its invincibility is again uncertain."