BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a rare public appearance on Friday, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, urged Arabs and Muslims to stay focused on opposing Israel despite bitter disagreements over the Syrian war, and declared that his Shiite followers would not bend in the face of rising anti-Shiite sentiment among those who oppose his support for the Syrian government.

It was the longest speech Mr. Nasrallah had delivered personally in public in years; since Hezbollah battled Israel in 2006, he has stayed largely underground, fearing assassination. He has relayed most speeches via video and made only rare, brief public appearances. The half-hour appearance, at a rally in a hall in southern Beirut, came a day after Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, was filmed visiting the heavily contested Damascus suburb of Daraya, and appeared aimed at building on the message of confidence that Mr. Assad had sought to project.

Speaking on Al Quds Day, also known as Jerusalem Day, Mr. Nasrallah, a bodyguard standing stiffly beside him, also invoked the Palestinian cause to shore up his party’s legitimacy inside Lebanon. A day earlier, President Michel Suleiman of Lebanon called, for the first time, for the Lebanese state to rein in the ability of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group and political party, to act as an independent military organization, a right it claims on the ground that it is the only group able to defend Lebanon from Israel.

Hezbollah’s rivals argue that it has forfeited that right by unilaterally sending fighters not to Israel but to Syria to battle an uprising that many Lebanese support. While the government lacks the ability to challenge Hezbollah militarily, the controversy has threatened Hezbollah’s political dominance, helped to bring down the government and left the state paralyzed under a caretaker prime minister.