[Al Arabiya Latest] Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Friday said his party stands ready for military confrontation with Israel but downplayed the probability of war in the near future."We do not think there will be a new Israeli war on Lebanon in the near future," he told a crowd of thousands gathered in Beirut's southern suburb, a stronghold of the Shiite group, to mark the third anniversary of the end of the summer war with Israel.
"Today we are in a better situation than we were three years ago," he said, referring to Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas movement.
"We do not want war, but we are not afraid of it and we say to you: if you bomb Beirut or its suburb, we will bomb Tel Aviv," Nasrallah said in the televised speech, adding that Hezbollah now has the capacity to strike any area in Israel.