Pager Attack: Israel Has Humiliated Hezbollah but Military Balance is Unchanged

Hezbollah, however, will be worried that the Israelis may have other tricks up their sleeves in the event of a war.

The pager exploit is the latest escalation in the long-running Israel-Hezbollah conflict, which has intensified with the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

(Photo: PTI)

You can be sure that Israel has a hand in the pagers exploding around Lebanon on Tuesday, killing 11 persons and injuring thousands. A couple of blasts here and there could have been some manufacturing defect. But thousands of simultaneous blasts can only occur if they are planned, and in this case, it is Mossad, the Israeli secret service.

According to a report, the Israelis acted following concerns that their secret may have been discovered by Hezbollah. They had originally reserved the operation as a surprise opening move in an all-out war against the Lebanese militant group. But just what the Israelis have achieved is less clear.

They have embarrassed Hezbollah, but they have not altered the military balance in any way. Israel’s problem of dealing with Hezbollah and relieving pressure on their northern border remains.

Over the weekend, the Israeli government has been holding consultations about the situation in Lebanon. Early on Tuesday, Israel’s security cabinet said it had updated its war objectives to include “returning the residents of the north securely to their homes.” This has officially expanded the Israeli war aims that had originally been focused on eliminating Hamas and rescuing the hostages taken on 7 October last year.

On Sunday, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had warned his Israeli counterpart Youav Gallant against expanding the war to Lebanon. On Monday, US envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel and warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against initiating a war on Hezbollah. But the Israeli leader told Hochstein that Tel Aviv had to act to ensure the return of thousands of Israelis who had been displaced from their homes in northern Israel following Hezbollah's attacks after October.

Israel has remained silent on the issue of the pager bombs and the US has also denied involvement. But the former has demonstrated time and again its ability to execute such covert operations.

It was involved with the US in the creation of Stuxnet, a sophisticated malware that made Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges go haywire, damaging over 10,000 machines. In 1996, they killed the Hamas bomb expert Yahya Ayyash by planting 15 grams of explosives in a rigged mobile phone.

The Israeli company NSO has been involved in the creation of the Pegasus software which is remotely and covertly installed in Android and iOS devices to record calls and conversations, copy messages, and harvest photos.

Why Pagers

Hezbollah has used pagers for communications for security purposes, hoping that they could avoid tracking by advanced systems used to track mobile phones. Pagers do not connect to the internet and thus are difficult to hack.

Unlike smartphones, paging systems use UHF or ultra-high frequency radio signals that operate independently from cellular networks.

Their signals are also able to penetrate buildings and obstacles which often block mobile signals. They are good for hospitals, and no doubt, Hezbollah found them useful for their underground hideouts. Pagers allow messages to be sent in a unique code in contrast to the open signals of mobiles which can be intercepted easily. They have the limitation of enabling only one-way communications. But they provide reliable and secure communications for hospitals and emergency services.

The lack of internet connectivity may make pagers less likely to be hacked, but the one-way nature of communications can make them more susceptible to being intercepted if their systems are compromised.

The devices that exploded were manufactured by Gold Apollo, a Taiwan-based company. Gold Apollo’s founder Hsu Ching-kuang has denied any involvement, claiming that the company did not make the pagers used in the explosions and that a European company called BAC with the rights to use the Gold Apollo brand was responsible for their design and manufacture.

It is entirely possible that Mossad created this European entity to make these pagers under Gold Apollo's license for their operation. Significantly, Hsu said that the payment from BAC had come from the Middle East.

On the other hand, at some point, Mossad managed to embed small amounts, maybe even 3-5 grams of explosives in each pager next to the battery along with a switch that could be triggered remotely. They also rigged them to detonate when a coded message, disguised as a communication from the Hezbollah leadership, was given on Monday afternoon causing mayhem across Lebanon.

The explosions were small and injuring those in close contact with the pagers. They did not affect buildings and other infrastructure but left individuals in some cases dead and some with severe wounds.

Escalation

The pager exploit is the latest escalation in the long-running Israel-Hezbollah conflict, which has intensified with the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war and the 30 July killing of Fuad Shukr, a founding member of Hezbollah’s armed wing, in an airstrike in Beirut.

The killing came hours before the assassination of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, also attributed to the Israelis. Shukr was a friend of a former top commander of Hezbollah Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in Damascus in 2008.

Its reputation has been seriously damaged by the operation, coming as it does after a communication breach that led to the strike on Shukr.

Hezbollah has long been supported by Iran and has been involved in periodic rocket salvos against Israel in the past year. On 25 August, Israel and Hezbollah had a massive exchange of fire, following what the Israelis said was a pre-emptive strike to foil a Hezbollah attack on Israel to avenge the Shukr assassination.

More than 100 Israeli fighter jets launched attacks on 40 different launching sites in Lebanon destroying several thousand rocket and missile launching barrels. Hezbollah, on the other hand, said that it managed to launch several hundred rockets and that its attacks had been successful.

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel for the pager bomb attacks but has not detailed any specific plan. But there will be caution within the Hezbollah leadership following the serious security breach involved in the pager attack. There will be worries that the Israelis may have other tricks up their sleeves in the event of an all-out war.

The latest Israeli operation has made the already volatile situation more dangerous. On one hand, we have Hezbollah wanting to avenge its recent setbacks, and on the other is the determination of Netanyahu and his coalition to continue the onslaught on Gaza. The publicised differences within the Israeli war cabinet over the war only make things more unpredictable.

(The writer is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)