Israel has bloodied Hezbollah but is stuck in a war of attritionhttps://en.majalla.com/node/322311/politics/israel-has-bloodied-hezbollah-stuck-war-attrition
Israel has bloodied Hezbollah but is stuck in a war of attrition
Two attacks on the Shiite militia may not change Israel’s strategic dilemma in Lebanon
AFP
Thick smoke rises above the southern suburbs of Beirut after an Israeli strike on September 20, 2024. Israel says Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil and around 10 other commanders were killed. Hezbollah has not confirmed Aqil’s death.
Israel has bloodied Hezbollah but is stuck in a war of attrition
First, it was pagers; then, it was walkie-talkies. On 18 September, another wave of explosions rocked Lebanon: two-way radios detonated in homes, offices and even at a funeral, a day after some 3,000 pagers blew up across the country and in Syria. In both cases, the devices were used by members of Hezbollah, the Shiite militia that has fired rockets at Israel for almost a year.
Some 20 people were killed and 450 injured in the latest attack, on top of at least 12 killed and nearly 3,000 hurt, many badly, in the pager blasts. Hundreds of people were blinded because they looked at their pagers just before the devices exploded. Others lost fingers and hands.
Israeli officials have not said much, and they surely will not claim responsibility. But no one else has both the means and motive to carry out such attacks. “I said that we would return the residents of the north safely to their homes, and that is exactly what we will do,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in a statement after the second round of explosions. Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, said the war had entered a “new phase” focused on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
All of this raises three questions: how these devices were made to explode, why Israel would have detonated them now, and what this means for its year-long conflict with Hezbollah.
The answer to the first question leads from a bunker in Beirut to an office park outside Taipei. Earlier this year, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, urged the group’s rank and file to stop using mobile phones, warning that Israel could hack the devices for surveillance and to target assassinations. Instead, the militia ordered pagers that seemed leakproof: they could only receive messages, not transmit them.
In photos from Lebanon, the devices that exploded on 17 September seemed to bear the trademark of Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company. But the firm denied making the pagers and said a Hungarian firm, bac Consulting kft, had a “long-term partnership” to produce them. “Our company only provides the brand trademark authorisation and is not involved in the design or manufacturing,” Gold Apollo said in a statement the day after the blasts.
Damaging Hezbollah's communications would have been an ideal prelude to a major Israeli offensive, but instead, a low-level war of attrition has set in
From there, the story gets weirder. Before it was taken offline, bac's buzzword-laden website said the firm was a consultancy working on sustainability and development. A LinkedIn profile for its "CEO" says that she worked for the un's nuclear agency, supported small businesses in Libya and helped women in rural Niger adapt to climate change. It makes no mention of a side business in pager manufacturing. The firm's address is listed as a villa on a residential street in Budapest. Calls to the number listed went unanswered.
Wherever they were built, it seems clear that Israeli agents hid explosives inside the pagers before they reached Lebanon and did the same with the walkie-talkies. Thousands of the militia's operatives were unknowingly carrying small bombs on their bodies, which Israel then detonated almost simultaneously.
Despite the operational success, the timing underscores Israel's strategic dilemma. Wounding lots of Hezbollah members and damaging the group's communications would have been an ideal prelude to a major Israeli offensive. Since 7 October, there have been voices calling for this in order to reduce Hezbollah's arsenal of long-range missiles and occupy a buffer zone inside Lebanon. But the government has not approved an incursion; instead, a low-level war of attrition has set in.
Israeli generals still talk of war in terms of when, not if, but the timing is hotly debated. Some want to take advantage now of the presence nearby of American aircraft carriers and fighter squadrons, which would help shield Israel from Hezbollah's missiles. But with their army still fighting in Gaza, albeit at a lower intensity, others would rather take time to rest and refit.
That Israel activated the bombs without any further action indicates that, for now, it is not rushing to all-out war. It may also suggest that Israeli spies feared that Hezbollah would soon discover the vulnerability, and they decided to act before the militia swapped out the pagers.
Hezbollah may not rush to war either. People close to the group describe a state of shock. It has been obvious for months that Israel had penetrated the militia: it has had no trouble assassinating a string of top commanders. But the back-to-back bombings are by far the biggest security breach in its history. "Hezbollah's military arsenal is virtually paralysed," says Lina Khatib of Chatham House, a think-tank.
People gather in front of a building targeted by an Israeli strike in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 20, 2024.
The group will need to spend months repairing its communications network and searching for leaks—hardly ideal conditions for a major attack against Israel. The attack also highlights a broader vulnerability for Iran and its allies: their reliance on imported electronics. Militias across the region will be nervous about what other devices might be compromised.
Members of Hezbollah often keep their affiliation secret. Mothers, wives and siblings will have discovered this week that their loved ones were part of the militia. That could cause tensions between Hezbollah and its constituents, some of whom are frustrated with the group's war against Israel. It could also produce new intelligence for Israel in intercepted phone calls and social-media videos from Lebanon.
None of this, though, changes Israel's dilemma. On 16 September, the Israeli cabinet updated the official aims of the war. They had been to defeat Hamas in Gaza and free the Israeli hostages held there. Now ministers also pledge to "return the residents of the north safely to their homes". It seems no coincidence that the pagers exploded the next day.
Since 8 October, when Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel, the prevailing view has been that only a ceasefire in Gaza will end those hostilities. But the prospects of a deal look dim. Israel thus wants to decouple the two fronts. It hopes the exploding pagers and radios will remind Mr Nasrallah of the damage that Israel can do to his militia and its standing in Lebanon.
Not surprisingly, the Hezbollah chief has other ideas. In a speech on 19 September, his first after the attacks, he promised that Hezbollah would not stop fighting until Israel ended its war in Gaza. But he looked tired, and his tone was unusually subdued: not a leader bent on expanding the war. As he spoke, Israeli jets broke the sound barrier over Beirut, and the Israeli army said other planes were carrying out air strikes in southern Lebanon.
For the Lebanese, all of this reinforced a feeling of despair. Many drew comparisons to the massive explosion at Beirut's port in 2020, another ordinary Tuesday on which death seemed to arrive from nowhere. Whatever their views on Hezbollah, they are nervous about what comes next and feel powerless to do anything about it.
