'Victory shall be ours by blood and will,' says Hizbullah chief

Hizbullah Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Friday that "President Bush will force the Palestinians to give up on the right of return and accept refugees settling in other Arab nations."

Nasrallah spoke at a rally honoring the Muslin New Year, which was held at the Sayyed Al-Shuhada mosque in Beirut: "The Zionists will take their pick out of the '67 territories, Jerusalem and the settlement, and will give the Palestinians whatever crumbs they'll have left over.

"He (US President George W. Bush) will demand the Lebanese accept reality and acknowledge Israel… that is Bush's testament, which he feels like he can dictate to us," said Nasrallah.

Resistance, he continued, is the only way: "We will not emigrate… We will stay on our land, in our cities and villages, even if our homes are destroyed and our soldier captured.

"The only way to deal with the Israeli plan for our region in through resistance... As I have promised you before – we are going from victory to victory, and it shall be ours by blood and will."

In a televised speech given earlier in the week, on the occasion of the Muslim New Year, the Hizbullah leader spoke at length about Bush's visit to "occupied Palestine," saying "Bush arrived here as if he is the defender of freedom and democracy.

"If he goes back 60 years, who started the killings? The Palestinians didn't do it, and the Jews who lived in Arab states lived peacefully. The ones doing the killing were Zionist gangs."

Nasrallah also slammed American media outlets and their "pro-American-Zionist allies" for presenting Israel as a symbol of democracy in the region. His comments were met by chants of "Death to America and to Israel" from the crowd.

Bush, warned Nasrallah, views Israel "as a Jewish state, that is, racist...its existence is premised on race. Israel aspires for a racially pure existence."

Should Israel choose to attack Lebanon again, he said, "it would suffer a defeat worse than the one bestowed on in the last war (the Second Lebanon War).

Nasrallah met with Muslin clerics last week and assured them he was doing all he could to "prevent the American and Israeli attempts top revoke a war between brothers," adding that "the American plan could never find success in Lebanon."