Report: Hezbollah devices were detonated individually, with precise intel on targets
Channel 12 says attack designed so only person carrying pager would be hurt by blast, quotes sources as saying Israel has far more extensive capabilities in Lebanon
Each of the pagers that exploded in the possession of their Hezbollah owners across Lebanon on Tuesday, injuring thousands of the terror group’s operatives, was individually detonated, with the attackers knowing who was being targeted, their location, and whether others were in close proximity, according to a Saturday evening television report.
In a lengthy report quoting Israeli and foreign sources, Channel 12 News said that those behind the attacks were determined to ensure that only the person carrying the device would be hurt by the blast.
“Each pager had its own arrangements. That’s how it was possible to control who was hit and who wasn’t,” the report quoted an unnamed foreign security source saying.
“They knew who he was with and where he was, so that the vegetable seller in the supermarket would not be hurt” when a pager of a man next to him exploded, the source said, referring to footage from the explosions in which a man was apparently blown up by his pager next to a fruit and vegetable stand.
At least 30 people were killed and thousands injured when pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, in a coordinated attack widely blamed on Israel after months of cross-border fire.
The Channel 12 report added several other new details to what had so far been uncovered regarding the unprecedented attack, for which Israel has not officially taken responsibility.
A video circulating on social media purports to show the moment that a pager used by a Hezbollah operative exploded in Lebanon. According to Lebanese media, dozens were injured after Israel allegedly hacked the devices and detonated them. https://t.co/1RMiF8wqAA pic.twitter.com/b07wTuRQ0N
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) September 17, 2024
Quoting an unnamed foreign security source, the report said that “tens of thousands of pagers” were produced and manufactured with the knowledge that they would be checked carefully by the client, Hezbollah.
Interviewed in the report, Ronen Bergman, an investigative reporter for The New York Times and Yedioth Ahronoth, explained that the pagers therefore had to work properly and betray no indication that they had been primed with explosives. Their appearance and weight had to be unchanged, and they needed to be able to pass detection by sniffer dogs.
Bergman said that the whole scheme was dreamed up by a brilliant female intelligence operative, aged less than 30, somewhere in the Middle East.
Whoever was responsible, the report said, decided to set up a factory to build the devices from scratch — so that “it won’t be a device that we will tamper with; it will be a device that we will produce.” The New York Times came to the same conclusion in a report on Thursday.
The ability to supply the device to Hezbollah was helped by the fact that the terror group is not able to make purchases on the open market, because of suppliers’ fears of sanctions from the United States, and therefore must routinely work with intermediary suppliers.
Bergman said that when, on October 10, the Israel Defense Forces and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had pressed for Israel to attack Hezbollah, rather than focus initially solely on Hamas after its October 7 invasion and massacre, “it is reasonable to assume” that buttons detonating these devices would have been pressed, and very heavy airstrikes on Hezbollah would have followed.
In the end, the IDF focused first on Gaza, and Hezbollah has been attacking Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis since, with the terror group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.
The Channel 12 report, which was approved by the Israeli military censor, said that Hezbollah bought more pagers after its military chief Fuad Shukr was killed in a targeted IDF strike in Beirut in July, and thereafter used pagers even more widely because of its growing wariness about using cellphones. Hezbollah, the report said, long assumed that Israel would be a threat to its cellphone communications in the event of a major escalation, and thus widely integrated the use of pagers.
In February, the report recalled, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned members not to carry cellphones, which he said could be used to track them and monitor their communications.
While Channel 12 repeated the widely reported assessment that the pagers were detonated this week because of a fear that the Trojan horse devices were about to be exposed by Hezbollah, it also quoted a foreign security source saying this was not the case, and that Israel had simply decided it needed to step up its actions against Hezbollah.
Amos Yadlin, a former IDF intelligence chief, said more broadly that Israel’s goal is to cause Nasrallah to realize that his attacks on the north “are costing him more than he’s gaining,” including in terms of support within Lebanon.
The report said it was regarded as “preferable” that the large number of Hezbollah fighters whose devices exploded be badly injured rather than killed, in part because of the immense strain this placed on health services in Lebanon, and by extension the raised domestic pressure on Hezbollah.
A foreign security source noted that the detonating pagers operation was not considered a strategic attack and that Israel has much more dramatic capabilities.
The source added that Israel has spent years developing these far more extensive capabilities for use against Hezbollah and Iran, but not as regards to Hamas — apparently because it underestimated the danger posed by the Gaza-based Palestinian terror group — and that this partly explains the failure to prevent the October 7 catastrophe. The capabilities used thus far in Lebanon are “relatively low-level,” the source said.
After the report aired, Eyal Hulata, a former national security adviser, told Channel 12 that thousands of Israelis had been working for years to create capabilities to ensure security for Israel.
“There are more capabilities like these,” he says, referencing the recent events in Lebanon. Hulata, who is also a former head of the Mossad’s technological branch, said that it was important that Israelis know this, given the collapse of public faith in the security establishment after the failure to prevent Hamas’s brutal October 7 massacre.
Hulata echoed IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, who said during a visit to the Northern Command on Wednesday that Israel had “many more capabilities” that had not been used yet in the fight against Hezbollah.
“We are very determined to create the security conditions that will bring the residents [of the north] back to their homes, to the towns, with a high level of security, and we are ready to do whatever is required to enable this,” Halevi said in a video released by the IDF.
“The rule is that every time we reach a certain stage, we have already prepared to move ahead forcefully with the next two steps. At each stage, the cost for Hezbollah should be high,” he added.
So far, the skirmishes on the northern border with Lebanon have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 22 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 502 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. Another 79 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians have also been killed.
Israel repeatedly warned that it could no longer tolerate Hezbollah’s presence along its border following the October 7 atrocities, and that should a diplomatic solution not be reached, it would turn to military action to push Hezbollah northward.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
