A pager-bomb attack causes disarray for Hizbullah
Editor’s note (September 18th): More explosions took place in Lebanon a day after the initial round of blasts, this time affecting walkie-talkies used by Hizbullah.
A MAN IS standing at a cash register when the pager at his waist explodes, hurling him to the ground. Less than a metre away, the cashier panics but seems unhurt. Another man, shopping for green almonds in a market, collapses when smoke bursts from his midriff. Some shoppers run away; others stare in confusion.
Similar scenes played out across Lebanon and Syria on September 17th, when thousands of pagers exploded within a short span of time, perhaps an hour. The devices were used by Hizbullah, the Shia militia that has been firing rockets at Israel since October last year. Months ago the group told its cadres to ditch their mobile phones, warning that Israel could hack them for surveillance and to target assassinations. Pagers were said to be a safe alternative, too low-tech to penetrate. That view was clearly mistaken.
At least nine people were killed in the blasts, among them the son of Ali Ammar, an MP from Hizbullah. Firass Abiad, Lebanon’s health minister, says around 2,800 others were wounded, including the Iranian ambassador in Beirut (his office claims he did not have a pager, merely that he was close to one). Police asked citizens to stay off the roads so ambulances could bring the injured to hospitals, which put out desperate calls for blood donations. Medics at the American University of Beirut’s hospital were told to throw away their own pagers.
Hizbullah was quick to blame Israel for the blasts. Officials in Jerusalem have not commented (and probably will not comment), but it is fair to assume they were responsible. They have spent days talking about a planned operation against Hizbullah, and months stressing the need to “restore deterrence” against the group and other Iranian-backed militias. In July Israel assassinated a top Hizbullah commander in Beirut and killed the leader of Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, in Tehran.
Sources close to Hizbullah are calling the pager explosions a cyber-attack, suggesting that Israel somehow caused the devices’ batteries to overheat and burst. But lithium batteries tend to burn, rather than explode, and none of the clips from Lebanon shows the devices catching fire. Nor do the injuries look consistent with runaway battery fires. In one graphic video from a Beirut hospital, several patients are missing fingers; another has a gaping hole on his right side. None has deep burns.
Blaming a hack may help Hizbullah avoid talk of a more humiliating alternative: that Israel sabotaged the pagers themselves, inserting a small amount of explosives and a detonator. Its spy agencies have carried out similar operations in the past. The most obvious parallel is the assassination in 1996 of Yahya Ayyash, a bomb-maker for Hamas, who was killed with an explosive hidden inside a mobile phone. Twelve years later Israeli spies killed Imad Mughniyeh, Hizbullah’s top military commander, with a bomb stashed in his SUV in Damascus.
Those assassinations, however, only needed one device to be booby-trapped at a time. The apparent attack on Hizbullah required Israel to sabotage thousands of pagers, probably before they were even shipped to Lebanon. Such a “supply-chain attack” would have taken months, if not years, to prepare. Perhaps the more important question, then, is why Israel chose to strike now. Blowing up your enemy’s communications devices is a one-off trick, not something to be used on a whim.
One possibility is that the pager-bombs were the opening act for a bigger offensive in Lebanon. Wounding much of Hizbullah’s command structure, and interrupting its communications, would be an effective prelude to an invasion. Israeli officials have spent the past few days talking up just such an operation, after weeks of heavier-than-usual rocket barrages fired at northern Israel by the militia. So far, however, there are no signs of an incursion. Israel’s generals and politicians are split over whether this is the right moment for a large military operation.
Another view is that the pager attack itself was the Israeli operation, a harsher blow than anything Israel has mustered in almost a year of tit-for-tat bombardment. “The security breach means that Hizbullah’s military arsenal is virtually paralysed,” says Lina Khatib of Chatham House, a think-tank. And it was effective psychological warfare, too: if Israel revealed this capability, Hizbullah will no doubt wonder what else it has in reserve and remain wary of using its remaining communication networks. People close to the group describe a state of shock after the explosions.
There are other possible explanations, too. Perhaps Israeli spies feared that Hizbullah would soon discover the vulnerability and decided to act before the militia swapped out its pagers. Or perhaps officials hope that Hizbullah will eventually hit back, and that the group’s response will be big enough to provide a pretext for a full-scale invasion.
Whatever the reason, the next few days will be tense. Israel may see Hizbullah reeling and decide on a bigger incursion, even if that was not the original plan. Hizbullah will have to weigh its own response. Like so many of Israel’s actions, the pager attack was a tactical success—but its strategic consequences remain to be seen. ■
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