The bomb attacks were a serious but not devastating blow to Hezbollah, analysts say – ABC 6 News

BEIRUT (AP) — The waves of remote-triggered explosions that struck the pagers and walkie-talkies carried by Hezbollah members in grocery stores, on the streets and at a funeral procession this week made for an eerie and shocking spectacle.

Analysts believe that after the attack, Hezbollah will be able to regroup militarily and find ways to communicate, but the psychological impact is likely to be severe.

The explosions, widely blamed on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement, killed at least 37 people, including two children, injured more than 3,000 and left even Lebanese with no ties to Hezbollah deeply unsettled.

The bombs struck Hezbollah civilian personnel, including health workers and media workers, as well as fighters, dealing a blow to the militant group's activities outside the battlefield. It is unclear how many civilians unaffiliated with Hezbollah were injured.

The attacks also revealed weaknesses in the low-tech communications system the group had used to evade Israeli cellphone surveillance.

Retired Lebanese army general Elias Hanna described the attacks as “Pearl Harbor or Hezbollah’s September 11th.”

Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center think tank who researches Hezbollah, said the explosions hit people in all of the group's institutions and that the attack was “like a sword in the bowels of the organization.” Hundreds of people were seriously injured, many losing eyes or hands.

“It will take time to heal those affected and provide them with replacements,” he said.

But Hage Ali and other analysts agree that the loss of life is not a devastating blow. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the group's fighting force numbers more than 100,000 men. That means that the attack – dramatic as it was – is likely to have incapacitated only a small portion of the fighters, even if all of the injured and dead were fighters.

Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah, said the bombs actually hit mostly the group's civilian workers rather than military or security officials, allowing the group to limit the impact on its war effort.

Hezbollah, the strongest armed force in Lebanon, has been exchanging fire with the Israeli military almost daily since October 8. The day before, a deadly Hamas attack in southern Israel triggered a massive Israeli counteroffensive and the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, attacks have killed hundreds in Lebanon and dozens in Israel, while tens of thousands have been displaced on both sides of the border. Hezbollah has said its attacks are in support of its ally Hamas and that it will stop its attacks if a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.

Following the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, Hezbollah continued firing rockets across the border on Wednesday and Thursday, albeit at a slower rate than usual.

The impact on Hezbollah's communications network is likely to be more devastating than the loss of life.

“Telecommunications are the nerve of military operations and communications,” said retired Lebanese army general Naji Malaeb, a security expert. A delay in communications could spell disaster, he said.

In a speech in February, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah warned his members against carrying mobile phones, saying they could be used to track them and monitor their communications.

But long before that, Hezbollah relied on pagers and its own private fiber-optic landline network to avoid surveillance of its communications.

The pagers that detonated on Tuesday were a new model that the group had recently started using. It appears that the devices were loaded with small amounts of explosives at some point during manufacture or transport and then detonated remotely.

Hanna said the group may rely more on its landline network – which Israel has tried to tap into several times – or on even less technical solutions such as hand-delivery of letters.

“Maybe you have to go back to human communication, to the postman,” he said. “That's what really helps (Hamas leader) Yahya Sinwar not to be targeted” in his Gaza hideout.

Orna Mizrahi, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based think tank Institute for National Security Studies and a former intelligence analyst for the Israeli military and the prime minister's office, said the loss of the ability to communicate via pagers was a “dramatic blow” but that the militant group had other communication methods and would rebuild its communications network.

The greater damage to Hezbollah is psychological, she said.

“Such an operation is humiliating and shows the extent to which the organization is exposed to Israeli intelligence,” she said.

Amal Saad, a lecturer in politics and international relations at Cardiff University in Wales and a researcher on Hezbollah, said the impact of the attack was largely due to the “demoralization and fear” it had sown.

“It's not just a security breach in the military,” she said. “The entire Hezbollah society will be extremely concerned because now everything is at risk of being hacked and tampered with.”

The group will “now rethink many things, not just the pagers,” Saad said.

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Associated Press reporter Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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