Nasrallah briefly emerges from his cave

Hezbullah politburo chief Hassan Nasrallah came out of his cave for half an hour on Friday - his first public address since 2006 - to try to defend his organization from increasing attacks by Lebanese politicians, and to try to switch the focus to Israel.

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.

No, the Lebanese people are unlikely to take back control of their country from Hezbullah anytime soon. If they cannot defeat Hezbullah militarily, they have no chance.

It is also not uncommon for Mr. Assad’s Syrian opponents to say that the fight against Hezbollah and the Syrian government is more urgent than that against Israel, and that Syrian security forces have killed more Syrians during the uprising than Israel ever did. Mr. Nasrallah responded by saying, “Israel represents a permanent and grave danger to all the countries and all the peoples of this region.”

The thinking of those who do not view it as the primary threat “reflects ignorance,” he added. The conflicts arising from the Arab uprisings, Mr. Nasrallah said, are political, not sectarian, in nature, but, he argued, in diverse countries like Syria, Lebanon and Bahrain, outside forces have tried to turn them sectarian “so that we Shiites forget Palestine and we forget Al Quds.”

Israel, which Mr. Nasrallah called “a cancer” that must be eradicated, has said it is not interfering in Syria’s conflict. American officials say Israel has bombed Syria several times to prevent the government from transferring strategic weapons to Hezbollah.

It's a pity that Nasrallah was allowed to survive his foray to the outside world. That mistake should not be made again.