Report: Hezbollah suspicions prompted Israel to accelerate deadly pager attack

ISTANBUL

Israel launched the deadly pager attack on Hezbollah earlier than planned on Tuesday, according to a media report. The Israeli army was responding to intelligence that two members of the Lebanese group had discovered that their devices had been compromised.

According to senior regional intelligence sources, the decision to carry out the operation prematurely was “forced” by this intelligence error, Al-Monitor reported online.

According to intelligence sources, there had been intense discussions within the Israeli security apparatus in the days leading up to the surprise attack, which killed nine people and injured thousands, including a 10-year-old girl.

They revealed that thousands of pagers recently acquired by Hezbollah had been rigged with explosives by Israel before being delivered to the group.

Although the sources did not say whether Israel produced the weapons or supplied them directly to Hezbollah, they confirmed that they had been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence, Al-Monitor said.

“They could be controlled from Tel Aviv,” one source noted.

The Israeli military's original plan was to detonate the devices in the event of a full-scale war with Hezbollah to gain a strategic advantage, the sources added, referring to escalating hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese group across the two countries' shared border.

“But the suspicions of at least two Hezbollah members led Israeli security authorities to agree to an early execution of the plan.”

Accelerated schedule because the plan was at risk

According to Al-Monitor, a Hezbollah member was killed in Lebanon after raising suspicions that a crime had been committed in connection with the pagers a few days ago.

“Days later, according to the sources, another Hezbollah member suspected the devices had been compromised and planned to alert his superiors, Israeli intelligence learned.”

“The sources said Israel's intelligence service was considering three options,” the news agency said. Either go to war with Hezbollah and detonate the pagers as originally planned, or detonate them immediately before a war and inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah personnel, or ignore the plan and risk being discovered.

The second option was ultimately implemented in an operation that was kept confidential even from Israel's ally, the United States.

“Al-Monitor's sources stressed that this was neither the original plan nor the Israeli government's preferred course of action. Instead, it decided to reserve such an operation for a full-blown conflict with Hezbollah, which Western intelligence agencies estimate has more than 150,000 missiles in its arsenal.”

According to three US officials, Israel also decided to detonate the pager devices used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria because it feared the group might have exposed its covert operations, the online portal Axios reported.

“It was a use-it-or-lose-it moment,” a US official said, according to Axios, explaining the reason Israel gave the US for the timing of the attack.

At least nine people, including a child, were killed in a mass explosion of pager communication devices in various parts of Lebanon on Tuesday, according to Lebanese Health Minister Firas Al-Abiad.

Hezbollah confirmed that at least two members were killed and many others injured in the mass explosion. It held Israel fully responsible for the incident and threatened Israel with “just retaliation from an unexpected quarter.”

The mass explosion of the pagers came amid a clash between Hezbollah and Israel and against the backdrop of Israel's relentless offensive in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas attack last October killed more than 41,000 people, mostly women and children.

The Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news offered to AA News Broadcasting System (HAS) subscribers, in a summarized form. Please contact us regarding subscription options.