Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday praised a string of recent terror attacks in the West Bank carried out by so-called lone-wolf assailants, saying the young perpetrators were “the future” of Palestinian resistance against Israel.

Speaking to mark the 13th anniversary of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Nasrallah said: “A few days ago there was an attempt to abduct an Israeli soldier” — an apparent reference to the murder of off-duty soldier Dvir Sorek. “They didn’t manage to abduct him so they killed him,”he said.

“Today there was a ramming attack. Yesterday young boys attacked policemen, as you saw on TV, with knives,” he added.

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Noting that the assailants were all young men, Nasrallah said: “This is an important development. This is the future generation of Palestine and the resistance.”

The terrorist leader also claimed that if Israeli ground forces were to invade Lebanon today Israelis would “watch their destruction on live broadcast.”

He said the residents of southern Lebanon were now secure and safe from attack due to cooperation between his group, the Lebanese people and the country’s army.

And he said “the enemy is afraid of hitting Lebanon” due to his organization’s work, although Israel has in fact carried out numerous airstrikes in Lebanon in recent years, targeting Hezbollah and Iranian munitions and other targets that pose a strategic threat.

Nasrallah also asserted that Israel had not wanted the war in 2006, but that rather it had been dictated to Israel by Washington, which wanted “to establish a new Middle East” as part of its campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan “and if the American project had succeeded, it would have led to American domination.”

He said the war, which was brought to an end after intensive international mediation, had ended only because “the US and Israel realized they had failed. If the war had continued it would have led Israel to disaster.”

And he claimed Hezbollah had agreed to the terms of the ceasefire only due to a lack of political unity in Lebanon. If such unity had existed, he asserted, “we could have imposed its terms for the end of the war.”

Nasrallah often makes bluster-filled speeches. Last month amid tensions between the US and Iran, he warned Israel could be “wiped out” in any conflict that erupts. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned in response that Israel would deal a “crushing” blow to Lebanon if it attacks.

Israel has long warned that Hezbollah plans to try and invade northern Israel in any future war and earlier this year uncovered several attack tunnels built deep into Israel that were supposed to allow its fighters to enter into Israel.