Hezbollah is in a “real battle” with Israel and all “options are on the table” in the conflict, the group’s leader said as he broke his silence on the war.

The Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7 showed that “Israel is weaker than a spider web”, Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech watched by thousands at a Beirut rally.

He said the deadly cross-border raid was “100 per cent Palestinian”, appearing to distance his Iranian-backed movement from the action, describing the massacre of 1,400 Israelis as a “glorious jihadi operation”.

Nasrallah stopped short of escalating the conflict as some had feared he might but warned that a wider war in the Middle East was a realistic possibility after Hezbollah has repeatedly traded fire with Israeli forces in recent weeks.

Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terror group based in Lebanon with significant firepower, was poised to increase attacks on Israel at will, Nasrallah said.

But his 90-minute speech made clear that the group would not engage further for now, saying the recent skirmishes its fighters had been involved in along the Israel-Lebanon border were already a success.

Those frontier clashes have forced the Israeli military to divert resources to its northern border that otherwise may have been sent to the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas, in retaliatory attacks.

Thousands of Nasrallah’s supporters gathered to watch his speech, televised on huge screens set up all across Lebanon. Large crowds chanted in support of the Beirut-born cleric, now 63, and one of the most recognisable figures in the Arab world.

Even in Jerusalem, his words were broadcast on radio.

Much of what he had to say, though, reiterated sentiments from past speeches, using grandiose language to rail against the US and Israel.

He praised the “resistance fighters” who had died in the conflict so far, saying they were now in a place where “there is no American or Israeli hegemony or hubris [and] no massacres”.

Declaring full-scale war now would be costly for Hezbollah and Lebanon, where the group holds significant political sway. Lebanon is grappling with a severe economic crisis.

Hezbollah also suffered devastating losses in its last major war with Israel in 2006. At least 57 of its fighters have been killed in the recent border clashes, Nasrallah said, amounting to a fifth of the losses it suffered during the 2006 conflict.

Military nowhere to be seen

Near the Israel-Lebanon border on Friday afternoon, just before Nasrallah spoke, the Israeli military was nowhere to be seen.

Roads and villages dozens of kilometres away from the frontier sat empty after recent evacuations prompted by the fighting.

Residents of Kiryat Shmona, the biggest city near the border, were ordered to leave less than a fortnight ago as rocket attacks from Lebanon intensified.

Municipal workers were busy clearing up the yard of a street-side cafe that had been hit by a rocket.

Cats were running around the charred remains of parked cars as workers poured asphalt into the crater created by the projectile.

A few doors away, Shimon Aymon, 64, was drinking beer at one of the few supermarkets that stayed open after the evacuation orders.

A native of Kiryat Shmona, Mr Aymon said he finds the idea of leaving hard because of his 86-year-old mother.

“Why should I go to another place? There will be bombing somewhere else, too.”

As an acquaintance picked up a charred piece of Hezbollah rocket as big as a carrot, Mr Aymon admitted that he lives in fear even though he had decided to stay: “You feel it in your body. If someone tells you it’s not scary, they are crazy.”