BEIRUT, Lebanon (Reuters) -- Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah urged Palestinians on Friday to maintain their 12-week-old uprising against Israel, saying violence and not negotiations would enable them to regain their rights.

"Palestinians, your Intifada has put pressure on Israel, it has caused the downfall of a government," Nasrallah told thousands of Hezbollah guerrillas in Beirut during a parade to commemorate Al-Quds or Jerusalem Day.

"It has created a historic chance, a once in a lifetime opportunity and you should not squander it. The world has never been so sympathetic to your cause and this is your chance to get what is rightfully yours," he added.

"You have a historic obligation to continue this Intifada."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak resigned this month amid bloody clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops, paving the way for early elections due in February.

Analysts say a peace deal with the Palestinians could benefit Barak's chances at the polls. The caretaker premier had dispatched a team of negotiators to Washington to explore options with the Palestinians.

Nasrallah, who became an Arab hero after his Shi'ite Muslim group drove Israel to end its 22-year-occupation of south Lebanon, told the Palestinians not to bank on the peace talks, Israel's new premier and U.S. President-elect George W. Bush.

"Israelis are Zionists, butchers, bloodsuckers," the black-turbaned, youthful cleric said.

"The new U.S. president will be what Israel wants him to be. Negotiations will not bring back what is rightfully yours. Only your efforts will," he said, referring to Palestinian demands for a sovereign state with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.

Nasrallah lauded the Palestinian suicide bomber who had earlier killed himself and wounded three people in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, raising the death toll in almost three months of violence to at least 340 people.

Almost all the dead have been Palestinians.

"This is the most beautiful response," Nasrallah said. "If we are not given back our land then we will regain it with weapons, suicide attacks and corpses."

Hezbollah's lengthy war of attrition against Israeli troops in south Lebanon, and the resulting casualty toll, pressured Barak into ending Israel's occupation of the area.

The group is still fighting to oust Israeli troops from the disputed Shebaa Farms, an area at the foot of the Golan Heights which Israel seized from Syria in 1967.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Lebanon's political master Syria and its ally Iran, has sought a more regional role since the withdrawal and promised to participate in the struggle to "liberate" East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel in 1967.

It has captured three Israeli soldiers during attacks in Shebaa in October. It also seized a reserve colonel in military intelligence and wants to trade all four Israelis for Arab and Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.

On Friday, thousands of Hezbollah guerrillas marched through southern Beirut and the eastern town of Baalbek in one of the biggest displays of force by the Muslim Shi'ite group in years.

The guerrillas, wearing black combat gear and headbands emblazoned with Hezbollah's motto, stomped over American and Israeli flags while chanting: "Jerusalem, we are on our way" and "Zionists, Hezbollah's will return."

A military-style band played marches as guerrillas scaled buildings and balanced on tightropes above an archway painted to resemble Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque, delighting the thousands-strong crowd.