CHENNAI: Multiple large explosions rocked Beirut on Friday as Israel targeted the headquarters of Lebanon’s powerful militant group Hezbollah.
The attacks followed nearly two weeks of bombings that have killed more than 700 people and displaced at least 1.2 lakh people in Lebanon. The stated objective of Israel’s military campaign is to crush Hezbollah’s ability to harm the residents of northern Israel. Since the start of the war in Gaza last October, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have been trading fire on a near-daily basis. Rocket attacks from Lebanon have forced thousands of Israelis in the north to leave their homes.
Mini explosions
Tensions between Israel and Lebanon escalated sharply in the last two weeks. One set of events that marked the start of the escalation was the pager blasts.
Around 3.30 pm on September 17, hundreds of mini explosions rocked Lebanon and parts of Syria, killing at least 11 people and injuring over 2,700. The source: imported handheld pagers.
In the weeks and months that preceded, Israeli air strikes had killed dozens of Hezbollah’s men, including senior commanders. On September 17, the well-trained Lebanese force would have had its eyes glued to the sky to catch the next threat before it landed. But on that day, the threat was not in the sky, but in the pockets of Hezbollah members.
Hundreds of pagers exploded in near-simultaneous fashion, including at homes, grocery stores and other civilian centres. Two children were among the dead. Lebanon called it its biggest security breach in recent times and pointed fingers at Israel, which, as expected, did not acknowledge its role in the attacks. The following day, it was the turn of walkie-talkies and solar power systems to explode.
There would be few instances of such a widespread and near simultaneous attack on a country by an enemy in recent times. The explosions were all small, causing death or injuries only to those who were very close to the devices. But the sheer number of exploding devices and indiscriminate nature of the attacks (pager could have been in the hands of civilians, including children) gave an indication of the escalation of tensions between Lebanon and Israel.
The cool gadget of the 1980s
Why would anyone want to use pagers in this age when its technology is a relic? This is the age of sleek gadgets packed with an insane amount of tech, where an iPhone that’s a few years old looks like a Stone Age device to youngsters.
But for Hezbollah, this 1980s-style one-way communication device serves a purpose. Evade Israeli tracking. Pagers or beepers receive message via radio waves from a base station. One-way pagers can only receive messages. Since they don’t transmit any signals, they are difficult to track compared to a cell phone.
Pointing to Israel’s highly sophisticated tracking capabilities, Hezbollah leaders have advised its cadre against using cell phones. “Israel no longer needs collaborators. Its surveillance devices are in your pockets. If you are looking for the Israeli agent, look at the phone in your hands and those of your wives and children.” Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned in February.
Three shell companies
Around 5,000 pagers were ordered, and they were delivered around five months ago, a Lebanese official told Reuters. The model, Rugged Pager AR-924, sported the name of a Taiwanese manufacturer of wireless paging systems, Gold Apollo. The company denied it made the pagers that went off. Instead, it said, they would have been made by a Hungarian company, BAC Consulting, under a licensing agreement. Later, a New York Times report said the pagers were made by three shell companies manned by Israeli intelligence agents and supplied to the unsuspecting Lebanese force. BAC Consulting is one of the three companies. While the firms took orders from other clients, the pagers that were made for Hezbollah had their lithium batteries laced with the explosive PETN, sources in the intelligence briefed about the operation told NYT. Reports said the explosion was triggered upon receiving a message that appeared to be coming from Hezbollah leadership. The operation was well-planned, and as the results show, well-executed.
When Nasrallah advised his men to put away the phones and turn to pagers, he seemed to have underestimated the imaginative power of Israeli intelligence. Nasrallah called mobile phones ‘Israeli agents’, but the pagers he suggested as an alternative turned out to be ‘Israeli bombs’.
Israel got into pager manufacturing in 2022, long before Nasrallah’s warning and even the Hamas attack of October 2023. But, the NYT report said, it was after Nasrallah’s caution against cell phone usage that Israel ramped up the production of pagers, sensing an opportunity. It is not clear when Israel began lacing the pager batteries with PETN. Though there were underlying tensions, the relations between Israel and Lebanon were relatively calm in 2022. In October of that year, the two countries agreed to solve their maritime border dispute under US mediation.
Indian connect
An Indian angle came up in the pager supply with allegations that a Sofia-based shell company, Norta Global Ltd, was tied to their sale to the Hezbollah. Norta was founded in 2022 by Rinson Jose (39), a Norwegian-Indian man, whose roots are in Kerala. After a Hungarian website’s claimed that Norta was linked to the pager sale, Bulgaria probed the company’s role, but found no evidence to substantiate the charge that they were made or exported from its country.
However, Norwegian police have issued an international search request for Jose, who disappeared while on a work trip to the US last week. “A missing persons case has been opened, and we have sent out an international warrant for the person,” the Oslo police told Reuters. Jose’s Norwegian employer, DN Media Group, said he left for a conference in Boston on September 17, and the company has not been able to reach him since the following day. Jose works at the group’s sales department.
Tensions escalate
As per US and Israeli officials who spoke to Axios, the pager explosions were planned as an opening Israeli move in its all out war against Hezbollah. Reading this along with the Lebanese official’s claim that the exploding pagers arrived in the country five months ago gives the impression that Israel has been anticipating a war with its northern neighbour for at least a few months now.
A day after pagers went off, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said the centre of gravity of the war is shifting north. “We are at the start of a new phase in the war — it requires courage, determination and perseverance on our part,” he said. In the days that followed, Israel has carried out some of its most intense air strikes on Lebanon since the 2006 war between the two. Hezbollah, for its part, fired missiles deep into Israel, one reaching as far as the Tel Aviv.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned down a US-led proposal for a 21-day ceasefire. “Israel has every right to remove this threat. We’ll continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met,” Netanyahu said in his UN address.With Israel amassing troops on the Lebanon border, a ground operation cannot be ruled out.
