Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah showed up in public at celebrations for the release of five prisoners from Israeli jails and whispered in Samir Qantar's ear after a long embrace, telling him that the July 2006 war was "for your sake."

Television footage showed Nasrallah standing next to Qantar, freed Wednesday from an Israeli prison along with four Hizbullah fighters as part of a prisoner swap.

The Hizbullah chief was whisked out of sight a few minutes after his late Wednesday appearance at Al-Raya stadium in Beirut's southern suburbs to greet Qantar and his comrades.

Before vanishing to give a speech via video link, Nasrallah embraced the freed prisoners and when he turned to Qantar he whispered in his ear: "Come closer Samir … The whole (2006) war was for your sake," the daily Al-Akhbar, which is close to Hizbullah, reported.

Nasrallah, who described the event as a national wedding, said "Operation Truthful Promise" launched in 2006 has "achieved its goal by the release of the five prisoners."

"The victory achieved in July 2006 is the main factor that produced today's victory," he said.

Nasrallah hailed the "victory" of his movement in the swap, which saw the five Lebanese prisoners exchanged for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers Hizbullah had captured in a cross-border raid in 2006 which sparked a devastating 34-day war between the Shiite group and the Jewish state in which over 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and over 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed.

"The period of defeat is over and the time of victory has arrived," Nasrallah said.

"This people and this nation and this country that gave a clear picture to the world... cannot be defeated," he added.

Nasrallah said that by not revealing the fates of the captured soldiers his group had been put in a position of strength in negotiating the swap.

"Had their fates been revealed in a tactical error, the negotiations would have taken a different course," he said.

"If we had been defeated in July 2006, Samir and the martyrs would not have been returned today," he later told the crowd appearing on a screen standing in front of a blue curtain with a white dove carrying a banner that said "the Radwan operation."

Hizbullah has dubbed the swap the Radwan operation after the alias used by top Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a bombing in Syria in February for which Hizbullah has blamed Israel.

Nasrallah said: "Our only concern is to defend our country, its territory, its water and its people and we are open to all discussion for a national defense strategy to do that."

Newly elected President Michel Suleiman, who greeted the prisoners at the airport, called for the formation of a national defense strategy in his inaugural speech in May.

Nasrallah called on Lebanese factions to reunite and "overcome sensitivities and move away from grudges and take advantage of the opportunity to address the problems in a spirit of solidarity in the national unity government."

"Within the framework of a national unity government, we are willing to cooperate in dealing with all the issues without exception in order to serve the national interest and unity," Nasrallah added.

Qantar told the cheering crowds he thanked God for giving him the strength to endure his almost three-decade imprisonment, which made him the longest-serving Arab prisoner in Israel.

"Thank God we arrived to this day; this day of victory, never to return to a day of defeat. Thank God who gave me strength... and who always gave me hope in the moments of weaknesses," Qantar said.

"Thank God who gave me the ability to endure, challenge and face imprisonment. Thank God (who) resurrected in this country a resistance, this great Islamic resistance," he added.

The last time Nasrallah made a public speech was in September 2006 in a victory celebration among the ruins of the southern suburbs of Beirut destroyed during the July-August 2006 war Hizbullah fought with Israel.

He appeared in public for a few minutes in January during the Shiite Muslim holiday of Ashura.(Naharnet-AFP)