Hezbollah chief backs Palestinian 'intifada'

The head of Lebanon's powerful Shiite Hezbollah movement on Wednesday backed a series of Palestinian attacks on Israelis, describing them as resistance and an "intifada".

"I emphasise our absolute support for the rights of the Palestinian people and their intifada," Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address ahead of the Shiite Muslim religious holiday Ashura.

"It is incumbent upon us all to stand by the Palestinians and help them all we can, and to recognise the fact that the Palestinians have in front of them... no choice but the choice of resistance and intifada," he added.

Nasrallah said the Palestinians were responding to "provocations by Israelis" and were seeking to prevent the "Judaisation of Al-Aqsa mosque".

His comments come after a wave of mainly stabbing attacks by Palestinians against Israelis that have raised concerns of a full-blown uprising akin to the first and second intifadas.

On Wednesday, two more stabbing attacks were reported in Jerusalem, including one that wounded a 70-year-old woman.

Hezbollah is a fierce opponent of Israel and battled to push its forces out of southern Lebanon before their withdrawal in 2000.

The group fought a deadly month-long war with the Jewish state in the summer of 2006.

That conflict killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and some 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

In recent years, Hezbollah has skirmished with Israel on the demarcation line between Lebanon and the Jewish state, but avoided a larger-scale conflict.

Source: AFP