---
title: "Shock and Awe in Lebanon: How Israel Began its War with Hezbollah"
description: "Israel and Hezbollah are at war. After nearly a year of saber-rattling, mutual escalation, and frenzied attempts by the international community to draw down hostilities, the border between Israel and its northern neighbor Lebanon is now just as much a war zone as the Gaza Strip. Over the course of the last two weeks, the world has watched, transfixed, as mass sabotage attacks, waves of rocket assaults, and a crushing air offensive have taken what little hope remained for this part of the world, and stomped it down into the dirt. An unprecedented infiltration of Hezbollah’s communications network has laid the groundwork for what is almost certainly a new Israel-Hezbollah conflict, marking an intelligence feat that will be analyzed for decades. This is the story of how Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah started, how the initial phases unfolded, and the profound implications of the escalating hostilities.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n- On September 17, an Israeli sabotage operation detonated thousands of Hezbollah pagers across Lebanon.\n- The explosive pagers were manufactured by an Israeli shell company called BAC Consulting under the Gold Apollo brand.\n- A second wave of detonations targeted counterfeit Icom two-way radios used by Hezbollah operatives on September 18.\n- Israeli commandoes executed an unprecedented ground raid in Masyaf, Syria, destroying a Hezbollah missile manufacturing facility on September 8.\n- A targeted airstrike in Beirut killed Ibrahim Aqil, head of Hezbollah's elite Radwan fighting force, massively disrupting their command structure.\n- September 23 marked the deadliest day in Lebanon since 1990, with 558 people killed during massive Israeli airstrikes against rocket infrastructure.\n\n## The Initial Pager Detonations and Widespread Casualties\n\nThe attack came without warning at approximately 3:30 PM local time all across Lebanon on Tuesday, September 17. At that time, thousands of handheld pager devices started beeping all at once, seemingly without any reason to cause concern—but certainly indicating an urgent enough notice that those pagers should be checked. Not every pager in Lebanon started going off at once; instead, just one type was receiving the message: a new pager model called the AR924. It was purportedly produced by a company called BAC Consulting, under the branding and distribution of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In Lebanon, the AR924 pager wasn’t just any other device picked up by random shoppers at the nearest electronics store. The people who carried that particular pager, for the most part, had been given the devices by a group that exerts supreme influence in Lebanon: the non-state militant organization, Hezbollah. Although Hezbollah had acquired its new pagers from a friendly-looking, trustworthy company from Taiwan, they either didn’t realize, or didn’t care, that the company BAC Consulting was the one that built the pagers—not Gold Apollo. What Hezbollah certainly didn’t find out until it was too late was that BAC Consulting—despite being based in Hungary—was an Israeli shell company. The people behind it happened to work for one of the most dangerous and ruthless intelligence organizations on the planet: the foreign intelligence service, Mossad. BAC Consulting did build normal pagers, and Hezbollah is an organization whose highest leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has insisted that his members use pagers for years, owing to suspicions that cell phones were too easily hijacked or exploited by Israel. Twelve people were reported dead in the immediate aftermath, after the small explosive devices concealed within Hezbollah's new pagers detonated following several seconds of a sustained beeping alert. Close to three thousand more were injured, including several hundred wounded critically. Because of the small size of the explosive devices—containing no more than a couple of ounces of a compound called PETN—they weren't nearly so fatal as to cause mass casualties in each individual blast. Instead, people standing near to a person who had been holding their pager when it blew were largely unharmed. Because of the signal emitting from the pager and the nature of the device itself, injuries came disproportionately to people's hands, eyes, faces, and the sides of their torsos, where they might have carried the devices on their hip. According to some reports, the devices beeped for a few seconds and then detonated when people were likely to be checking the message that had come in. According to others, the pagers beeped and showed an error code, only exploding when their users pressed the buttons to clear the code—thus further increasing the likelihood of people holding them in their hands, near to their faces, when the devices blew up. In possible support of that claim, it appears that not all of the explosions happened simultaneously. Instead, they continued for about half an hour once the attack began. Some 150 or more hospitals across Lebanon received victims of the attack, streaming in all at once with injuries of varying severity. Some among the twelve killed were civilians, including two children: the nine-year-old daughter of one Hezbollah member, and the eleven-year-old son of another. Also among those killed were multiple healthcare workers from Beirut who had used the pagers, and the son of a Lebanese parliamentarian who was loyal to the Hezbollah organization. They, like the vast majority of those injured, were Hezbollah members. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah later confirmed that about five thousand of the devices had been purchased and distributed to lower-ranking members of the organization. A large proportion of the wounded were in or around Beirut at the time of the attack. While a range of injuries were sustained by those who had been targeted, eye injuries were among the most common, second only to blown-off fingers and thumbs. One ophthalmologist at a Beirut hospital, Dr. Elias Warrak, attested that at his hospital, over sixty percent of patients had at least one eye removed. Dr. Warrak stated, \"Some of the patients, we had to remove both eyes. It kills me. In my past 25 years in practice, I’ve never removed as many eyes as I did yesterday.\"\n\n## Intelligence Assessment and the Diplomatic Blindspot\n\nIn the hours immediately after the attack, no nation or non-state actor took credit, but even before the dust had settled, experts all across the world were in agreement on who was most likely responsible. That would be the nation of Israel, the long-time archenemy of the Hezbollah organization. To be more precise, such an attack would have probably fallen under the domain of its most feared and ruthless spy agency, Mossad. At first, spokespeople for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the incident, in a move characteristic of Israeli institutions after a major intelligence feat like this one. By the following day, the Chief of Staff of the IDF, Herzi Halevi, admitted that \"we have many capabilities that we have not yet activated…we have seen some of these things, it seems to me that we are well prepared and we are preparing these plans going forward.\" Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant publicly referred to the pager explosions as \"excellent achievements\" by the IDF and Israeli intelligence on the following day, and according to US officials, Israel quickly claimed credit for the attack in private conversations. The US, Israel’s primary international backer, attested that its own intelligence and political leaders had been given no indication of the impending attack before it began. Their only signal had been a vague and cryptic call from Israel's Minister of Defense to his colleague in the US, warning of an attack just minutes before it began. A visiting top advisor from America's Biden administration, Amos Hochstein, had been in Israel the day prior to the attack, and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, but was never told of the impending operation. The implications of Israel's infiltration and attack are complex and, in many ways, quite concerning. A nation involved in a long and quickly escalating conflict, against a non-state actor based on the soil of another sovereign nation, just secretly built and distributed some 5,000 well-camouflaged miniature explosive devices into the ranks of its adversary. They then performed a coordinated mass detonation that caused thousands of casualties, without any of its own personnel sustaining so much as a minor injury. That is one of the most complex, and most stunning intelligence infiltrations and sabotage attacks of all time, taking the time-tested assassination tool of planted explosives and employing it on an industrial scale.\n\n## Strategic Logic and Preemptive Operations\n\nDiscussion around the world was about more than Israel's sleight of hand. It was received partially with celebration from Israel's most ardent supporters, and partially with deep concern for both the nature of its tactics and the line of thinking that had brought Israel to that point. The sweeping nature of the attack, and the high rates of casualties among non-fighting Hezbollah personnel and civilians, led to condemnation for its indiscriminate nature. However, like the follow-on attacks by Israel against Hezbollah, and like so many of the IDF’s attacks on Hamas in Gaza, this pager attack was targeted, even if on a large scale. But what it also was, was an attack that accepted astronomically high risk of collateral damage, deaths or injuries of children and bystanders, and deaths or injuries of medical personnel exempted from such attacks by international law. Israel has a long history of concocting operations to degrade the capabilities of its adversaries, including prior booby-trap attacks like planting bombs in Hamas cell phones, sabotage attacks against Iran’s nuclear program, and international airstrikes killing the leaders of enemy organizations. Recently, Israel has engaged in more direct assaults on Hezbollah's support network. In one particularly eye-catching operation on September 8th of this year, Israeli commandoes carried out a raid in the Syrian town of Masyaf in Hama province. The nearly unprecedented ground raid via helicopter airdrop saw dozens of special-forces operatives breach and destroy a critical facility that manufactures short- and medium-range missiles for Hezbollah. Several Iranian special-forces commandoes were purportedly taken captive, and substantial sensitive intelligence was extracted. Israel's destruction of the several thousand Hezbollah pagers might appear at first glance as if it had been designed with intentions of disrupting the early stage of a Hezbollah defense and causing unexpected mass casualties to clear the way for an Israeli assault. However, according to some sources within Syria, the pager attack itself was executed on Tuesday the 17th not because of advantageous timing, but because Israeli officials had feared that Hezbollah might have discovered the operation. According to one US official speaking to Axios, Israel had described its pager explosions after the fact to the US as a \"use it or lose it\" opportunity. After Israeli intelligence had raised concerns to Israel’s leaders that Hezbollah might find the explosives, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his civil and military leaders signed off on an immediate attack instead. Emphasizing the reality of the situation, Hezbollah’s mid-level leaders were still distributing their new pagers to their underlings within just hours of the attack, indicating no widespread suspicion further down the chain of command. The attack and its impact constituted a difficult new reality for Hezbollah: that Israel had laid traps in unexpected and potentially shocking ways, leaving the group fundamentally unprepared for what might come next.\n\n## The Second Wave of Device Detonations\n\nIsrael, now knowing full well that it had created that perception across Hezbollah and across Lebanon, had a golden opportunity to reinforce the degree to which it could impose its will on Hezbollah while the group remained unable to strike back. Israel’s next move came one day after the pager attacks, on Wednesday, September 18th, in what amounted to a near carbon-copy repeat attack. This time, the handheld electronic devices in Israel’s crosshairs weren’t pagers but two-way radios, or walkie-talkies, used by Hezbollah military and civil operatives. The two-way radios were counterfeits, made to look like a particular model manufactured by the Icom company, but clearly not actual Icoms, as that model's production and the production of their batteries had been discontinued about a decade ago. The ones Hezbollah had in its possession had been obtained by the group at about the same time as its new pagers, and Israel's choice to detonate the devices was likely due to the same use-it or lose-it concern they had cited for their pager attack. Notably, several residential solar power systems and biometric fingerprint readers also exploded across Lebanon, although it remains unclear whether those were separate explosions or triggered by nearby handheld radio explosions. This time, there were far fewer explosions, on the scale of hundreds rather than thousands, but the death toll was nearly double what it had been in the pager attack, rising to 25 by the following day. That may have been a byproduct of more powerful explosives in the somewhat larger devices, or a byproduct of the higher incidence rate of their users raising the devices to their heads before detonation occurred. A majority of those injured, however, appeared to have injuries primarily to their stomachs and hands. Over six hundred others were wounded, including some at a funeral organized by Hezbollah for those killed during the pager explosions of the prior day. Casualties were concentrated not just in Beirut but in southern Lebanon, likely indicating a higher incidence rate of the devices being used by Hezbollah's militant members, who have been operating in that area for months and launching frequent small-scale attacks on Israel. But the lower casualty numbers also reflected the fact that many of the radios were still in warehouse storage, kept aside in advance of a potential full-scale war with Israel—further reflecting that Israel likely detonated its bombs prematurely to do what damage they could, rather than see them found out during investigations after the pager attack a day prior.\n\n## Shifting the Center of Gravity to Northern Israel\n\nZoom out from the specifics of the operation, and the writing has been on the wall for several weeks that Israel was looking to shift its military's attention away from the war in Gaza and toward Lebanon. Hezbollah's military threat has been a primary concern for Israel stemming partly from Hezbollah's near-daily attacks into Israel in solidarity with Hamas, and partly from the results of those attacks. Most of Hezbollah's potential to do harm is concentrated in and around northern Israel, where its short-range rockets can sometimes carry out successful strikes before Israel's close-range air-defense system, the Iron Dome, can intercept them. As a result, tens of thousands of Israelis have been forced to leave their homes and communities as internally displaced people, and their return to the north has become a primary concern for the Israeli government. With northern Israel in mind, leaders within Israel spent weeks signaling a turn northward. The country's foremost opposition leader, Benny Gantz, stated on September 8th that \"We have enough forces to deal with Gaza and we should concentrate on what is going on in the north [...] the time of the north has come and I think we are late on this.\" Defense Minister Yoav Gallant noted that same day that the shift of the center of gravity could happen quickly. Just one day before the pager attacks, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the safe return of northern Israel's residents to their homes had been made an official war goal by his security cabinet. Over the subsequent weeks, Israel began to reposition major military assets to its northern regions, including the formidable 98th Division and its paratrooper and shock troop elements. But for Israel to launch a war with Hezbollah is a difficult prospect, and one where the barriers are far greater than they were in Gaza after October 7. Hezbollah is a similarly committed, similarly asymmetric foe, but they are far larger and far more complicated to dismantle. Among the group's assets are supposedly tens of thousands of foot soldiers, including thousands of combat veterans with intense experience fighting in Syria, and high-level commandoes who Israeli special operators regard as direct peers in battle. Both Israel and Hezbollah know that Hezbollah's ability to meet Israel as a large-scale asymmetric insurgency is contingent on its ability to use the element of surprise to launch weapons against Israel, and lure the IDF onto Lebanese soil where Hezbollah fighters can present a much greater threat. Israel has increasingly shown that it has the ability to disrupt Hezbollah's capacity for surprise attacks without sending its troops into Lebanon directly. Conventional wisdom held for months that the best way to get Hezbollah to back down would be a ceasefire in Gaza. But with ceasefire talks at a stalemate, Israel chose the middle path: taking a series of military actions designed to make it increasingly harder for Hezbollah to justify engaging in a war where it appeared underprepared, underequipped, or outmatched.\n\n## The Aerial Offensive and Decapitation Strikes\n\nThe following days would show that even if Israel hadn’t sprung its trap exactly as planned, it would capitalize nonetheless. September 19th saw wide-ranging and intense Israeli airstrikes all across Lebanon. These were among the most severe since the October 7 attack, and over a two-hour span, they saw Israeli jets strike hundreds of firing sites where multiple-rocket-launchers were stationed. According to the IDF, those rocket launchers were loaded and pointed at Israel at the time of the airstrikes, and a massive rocket attack against Israeli territory was purportedly imminent. Southern Lebanon took a shellacking, aligning with Hezbollah’s use of short-range rockets. That same day, Israeli warplanes sent huge sonic booms thundering across Beirut, so massive that they could be heard during a televised address by Hassan Nasrallah, who had insisted that Israel’s bombings crossed all red lines. On the twentieth, Israeli airstrikes targeted personnel, executing only Israel's second airstrike on the Lebanese capital this year. The strike targeted an apartment block, killing forty-five people, including sixteen of the group's members and ten Hezbollah commanders. Two in particular were especially important: Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wehbe. Aqil, the strike's primary target, was believed to be the head of Hezbollah's elite fighting force, Radwan, while doing double-duty as Hezbollah's Head of Operations and triple-duty as an informal Chief of Staff for the organization. The United States had offered a seven-million-dollar reward for information about him after he had helped plan the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Beirut and another 1983 attack that killed 241 American military personnel. With his death, Hezbollah suffered mass disruption to its command structure, losing a leader not easily replaced. Across the following two days, Israel continued its strikes like clockwork, bombarding about 180 more targets on September 21st, including thousands of individual rocket launch tubes. Hezbollah launched strikes of its own; on Saturday the 21st, Hezbollah launched a total of 150 rockets, cruise missiles, and drones in an assault. On Sunday, Hezbollah claimed that it had hit the Ramat David Airbase in Israel with two barrages of missiles and attacked a separate military-industrial complex near Haifa. Despite these retaliations, Israel vowed to hammer home the reality of Hezbollah’s difficult situations via military means for as long as was necessary, setting the stage for an unprecedented escalation.\n\n## The Deadliest Day and the Onset of Full-Scale Conflict\n\nMonday, September 23rd, became the single deadliest day of attacks by Israel against Lebanon since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. On that day, Lebanese citizens in the southern parts of the country received a video statement from Benjamin Netanyahu warning them to leave areas where Hezbollah may be storing weapons, insisting that Israel's war was not with them, but with Hezbollah. The IDF sent about 80,000 text messages to Lebanese numbers, urging immediate evacuation. Southern Lebanon became an evacuation zone, with thousands trying to escape on gridlocked roads. With Israeli warplanes streaking overhead in a massive show of force, the bombs began to drop. Israel claimed successful strikes on over one thousand targets, including a targeted strike in Beirut intended for a senior Hezbollah official. As of the following Tuesday, Lebanon’s health ministry stated that the death toll stood at 558 people, including no fewer than fifty children. 1,835 more people were reported wounded, making it Lebanon’s deadliest day for violence since the country’s fifteen-year civil war concluded in 1990. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that Israel had taken out tens of thousands of rockets and precise munitions, destroying what Hezbollah had built over twenty years. Senior Israeli officials denied that their intent was to clear out land in order to surge IDF ground troops and create a buffer zone. Instead, they aimed to degrade Hezbollah’s ability to attack Israel with rockets, force its fighters away from the border, and destroy infrastructure Hezbollah militants had placed in southern Lebanon. The events of September 23rd were the deadliest and most stunning by an order of magnitude since Hezbollah began its regular attacks on Israel on October 8th of the previous year. The allies of both Israel and Hezbollah released their respective statements on the strikes, with the United States announcing it would position additional troops at forward positions in the Middle East, while international organizations emphasized the immediate need for de-escalation. After months of trying to avoid such a day, September 23rd marked a final, undeniable signal to the world that the moment had arrived. Israel and Hezbollah were now, for all intents and purposes, at war.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### How were the explosive pagers introduced into Hezbollah's supply chain?\n\nThe pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting, an Israeli shell company based in Hungary operating under the Gold Apollo brand from Taiwan. Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah had directed members to use pagers for years because cell phones were considered too easily exploited by Israel, so the group acquired roughly 5,000 AR924 pagers from what appeared to be a trustworthy Taiwanese supplier — unaware that the manufacturer was a Mossad front.\n\n### Why did Israel detonate the pagers on September 17 rather than waiting for a more strategic moment?\n\nAccording to a US official speaking to Axios, Israel described the timing as a \"use it or lose it\" opportunity. Israeli intelligence had raised concerns that Hezbollah might have discovered the explosive devices, so Prime Minister Netanyahu and his civil and military leaders authorized an immediate detonation rather than risk the operation being uncovered. Hezbollah's mid-level leaders were still distributing the pagers to their members within hours of the attack, indicating there was no widespread suspicion lower down the chain of command.\n\n### What were the casualty patterns from the pager and walkie-talkie attacks?\n\nThe September 17 pager explosions killed 12 people and injured close to 3,000, with injuries concentrated in the hands, eyes, faces, and torsos of those holding the devices. Eye injuries were among the most common; one Beirut ophthalmologist reported removing eyes from more than sixty percent of his patients that day. The September 18 walkie-talkie detonations, involving hundreds of devices rather than thousands, killed 25 people despite affecting fewer targets, possibly because users raised the larger radios toward their heads before detonation.\n\n### What was the significance of the September 20 airstrike in Beirut?\n\nThe strike on an apartment block killed 45 people including 16 Hezbollah members and 10 commanders. Its primary target was Ibrahim Aqil, believed to be the head of Hezbollah's elite Radwan fighting force, its Head of Operations, and an informal Chief of Staff for the organization. The United States had offered a $7 million reward for information about Aqil following his alleged role in planning the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Beirut. His death severely disrupted Hezbollah's command structure.\n\n### What made September 23 the deadliest day in Lebanon since 1990?\n\nIsrael claimed successful strikes on over one thousand targets across southern Lebanon that day, including rocket infrastructure that Defense Minister Gallant said Hezbollah had built over twenty years. Lebanon's health ministry reported 558 people killed, including at least fifty children, and 1,835 wounded — making it Lebanon's deadliest day since the country's civil war ended in 1990. Israel sent approximately 80,000 text messages to Lebanese numbers urging evacuation before the strikes began.\n\n## Related Coverage\n- [The Emergence of a New Nation: The Rise of the Southern Transitional Council in Yemen](https://warfronts-prod.fulcrum-labs.workers.dev/conflicts/the-emergence-of-a-new-nation-the-rise-of-the-southern-transitional-council-in-yemen)\n- [Israel Eliminates Houthi Prime Minister in Sana'a Airstrike](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/israel-eliminates-houthi-prime-minister-sanaa)\n- [Why is America Destroying its Strongest Alliances? And More.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/why-is-america-destroying-its-strongest-alliances-and-more)\n- [When the Red Button Falls: The Unraveling After a Global Nuclear War](https://warfronts-prod.fulcrum-labs.workers.dev/conflicts/when-red-button-falls-unraveling-global-nuclear-war)\n- [The UAE is in MASSIVE Trouble.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/the-uae-is-in-massive-trouble)\n\n## Sources\n1. <https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-explosives-hezbollahs-taiwan-made-pagers-sources-say-2024-09-18/>\n2. <https://www.axios.com/2024/09/17/hezbollah-pager-explosions-israel-tensions>\n3. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7xnelvpepo>\n4. <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/17/world/israel-hamas-war-news>\n5. <https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23452/hezbollah-pagers-explode-across-lebanon-causing-nearly-3-000-casualties>\n6. <https://www.axios.com/2024/09/17/hezbollah-pager-explosion-israel-didnt-tell-biden-administration>\n7. 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<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-it-is-preparing-attack-hezbollah-targets-bekaa-2024-09-23/>\n62. <https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-820063>\n63. <https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hezbollah-exchange-fire-after-lebanon-suffers-huge-casualties-2024-09-24/>\n64. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/24/middle-east-crisis-live-israel-lebanon-hezbollah-war-news#top-of-blog>\n65. <https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/09/24/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-ibrahim-qubaisi-unga-biden-final-speech/>\n66. <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/world/middleeast/israel-lebanon-strikes-deaths.html>\n67. <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/25/world/israel-gaza-hamas-hezbollah>\n68. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/25/israel-lebanon-strikes-hezbollah-commander-ibrahim-qubaisi-latest-news-death-toll>\n69. <https://apnews.com/article/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-gaza-news-09-25-2024-62cb173728d341c845bff9859addc7a5>\n70. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93pg1qpxxzo>\n71. <https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollahs-tunnels-flexible-command-weather-israels-deadly-blows-2024-09-25/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Daily-Briefing&utm_term=092524&user_email=4c30933ca127ef02cbd8fcb794471a2311d7f12055c9aeda86a10d88cd3f9c59&lctg=6422d13ff77d798afe06361d>\n72. <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-escalating.html?utm_source=dailybrief&utm_content=20240923&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyBrief2024Sep23&utm_term=DailyNewsBrief>\n73. <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/us/politics/israel-hezbollah-pager-attacks.html>\n74. <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-pager-attack.html>\n75. <https://www.mei.edu/events/olympics-and-russian-invasion>\n76. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20m1d77m86o>\n77. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/26/lebanon-temporary-ceasefire-plan-hezbollah-israel>\n78. <https://www.axios.com/2024/09/26/biden-macron-israel-hezbollah-ceasefire-lebanon>\n79. <https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanese-prime-minister-believes-ceasefire-between-israel-hezbollah-possible-2024-09-26/>\n80. <https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4900649-israel-rejects-cease-fire-proposal-from-us-allies/>\n\n[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-explosives-hezbollahs-taiwan-made-pagers-sources-say-2024-09-18/\n[2]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/17/hezbollah-pager-explosions-israel-tensions\n[3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7xnelvpepo\n[4]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/17/world/israel-hamas-war-news\n[5]: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23452/hezbollah-pagers-explode-across-lebanon-causing-nearly-3-000-casualties\n[6]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/17/hezbollah-pager-explosion-israel-didnt-tell-biden-administration\n[7]: https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-hezbollah-pager-explosion-e9493409a0648b846fdcadffdb02d71e\n[8]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hezbollah-pagers-explode-israel-taiwan-hungary-gold-apollo-bac-consulting/\n[9]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-pagers-explosives.html\n[10]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah.html\n[11]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-members-wounded-lebanon-when-pagers-exploded-sources-witnesses-2024-09-17/\n[12]: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/g-s1-23812/lebanon-israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah-international-law\n[13]: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/lebanon-pager-attacks-bear-hallmarks-sinister-dystopian-nightmare-witness\n[14]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/09/exploding-pagers-and-radios-terrifying-violation-international-law-say-un\n[15]: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/middle-east-device-attack-violate-international-law-advocates-113882402\n[16]: https://abcnews.go.com/International/israel-hand-manufacturing-pagers-exploded-lebanon-source/story?id=113851347\n[17]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hezbollah-pagers-explosions-what-now-rcna171602\n[18]: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-820815\n[19]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/18/hezbollah-pager-explosions-israel-suspicions\n[20]: https://www.vox.com/world-politics/372772/hezbollah-israel-pagers-radios-lebanon\n[21]: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cwyl9048gx8t\n[22]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/hezbollah-explosions-attack-lebanon-walkie-talkies-pagers-b2615018.html\n[23]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/18/explosions-linked-to-walkie-talkies-deaths-lebanon\n[24]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/18/israel-detonates-hezbollah-walkie-talkies-second-wave-after-pager-attack\n[25]: https://www.reuters.com/world/hezbollah-pager-explosions-live-2024-09-17/\n[26]: https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-hezbollah-israel-exploding-pagers-8893a09816410959b6fe94aec124461b\n[27]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/world/middleeast/israel-raid-syria-hezbollah.html\n[28]: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/18/1200121029/lebanon-hezbollah-attacks-pager-communications-device\n[29]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz04m913m49o\n[30]: https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah-syria-ce6af3c2e6de0a0dddfae48634278288\n[31]: https://www.barrons.com/news/israel-s-gantz-says-military-focus-needs-to-shift-to-lebanon-a432e627\n[32]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cglkkrj94ldo\n[33]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/16/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-gaza.html\n[34]: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/09/israel-braces-possible-all-out-war-against-hezbollah-iran-proxies\n[35]: https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240908-hezbollah-fires-rockets-israel-strikes-after-attack-kills-lebanon-emergency-workers\n[36]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/10/middleeast/hezbollah-commander-killed-israeli-airstrike-intl-latam/index.html\n[37]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-strikes-hezbollah-targets-lebanon-military-says-2024-08-25/\n[38]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-jets-are-carrying-out-huge-sonic-booms-over-beirut-witness-2024-09-19/\n[39]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/walkie-talkie-blasts-lebanon-japan-icom-israel-new-phase-war-hezbollah-rcna171773\n[40]: https://abcnews.go.com/International/threat-israel-hezbollah-war-looms-after-lebanon-device/story?id=113833089\n[41]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strikes-hit-multiple-targets-lebanon-2024-09-19/\n[42]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/19/world/israel-hezbollah-gaza-hamas\n[43]: https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-hezbollah-israel-mideast-tensions-attack-8ec89de2b117b52e2c09b19155e35d13\n[44]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanons-hezbollah-confirms-top-military-commander-ibrahim-aqil-killed-israel-2024-09-20/\n[45]: https://abcnews.go.com/International/100-rockets-fly-israel-hezbollah-world-leaders-urge/story?id=113867503\n[46]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y9wyy9pr2o\n[47]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/20/israel-strikes-hezbollah-military-commanders-beirut\n[48]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strike-beirut-friday-killed-31-lebanese-ministry-says-2024-09-21/\n[49]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollah-attacks-israeli-military-industry-complex-haifa-response-pager-blasts-2024-09-22/\n[50]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-hezbollah-lebanon-attacks-haifa-west-bank-al-jazeera-rcna172130\n[51]: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/22/g-s1-24085/dozens-of-rockets-fired-into-israel-from-lebanon-idf-says\n[52]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/21/world/gaza-israel-hamas-hezbollah\n[53]: https://apnews.com/article/israel-hezbollah-hamas-latest-22-september-2024-a593f6b84bb83a70480169bc94965e9a\n[54]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollah-israel-exchange-heavy-fire-after-deadly-israeli-strike-2024-09-22/\n[55]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3wy8kpy3eo\n[56]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-says-it-is-striking-hezbollah-targets-lebanon-2024-09-23/\n[57]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-evacuation-strikes-rcna172180\n[58]: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-lebanon-hezbollah-e3ca9c83642056f962fdf76319e3b8de\n[59]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/23/world/gaza-israel-hamas-hezbollah\n[60]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-war-gaza-hamas-idf-airstrikes/\n[61]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-it-is-preparing-attack-hezbollah-targets-bekaa-2024-09-23/\n[62]: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-820063\n[63]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hezbollah-exchange-fire-after-lebanon-suffers-huge-casualties-2024-09-24/\n[64]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/24/middle-east-crisis-live-israel-lebanon-hezbollah-war-news#top-of-blog\n[65]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/09/24/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-ibrahim-qubaisi-unga-biden-final-speech/\n[66]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/world/middleeast/israel-lebanon-strikes-deaths.html\n[67]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/25/world/israel-gaza-hamas-hezbollah\n[68]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/25/israel-lebanon-strikes-hezbollah-commander-ibrahim-qubaisi-latest-news-death-toll\n[69]: https://apnews.com/article/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-gaza-news-09-25-2024-62cb173728d341c845bff9859addc7a5\n[70]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93pg1qpxxzo\n[71]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollahs-tunnels-flexible-command-weather-israels-deadly-blows-2024-09-25/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Daily-Briefing&utm_term=092524&user_email=4c30933ca127ef02cbd8fcb794471a2311d7f12055c9aeda86a10d88cd3f9c59&lctg=6422d13ff77d798afe06361d\n[72]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-escalating.html?utm_source=dailybrief&utm_content=20240923&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyBrief2024Sep23&utm_term=DailyNewsBrief\n[73]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/us/politics/israel-hezbollah-pager-attacks.html\n[74]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-pager-attack.html\n[75]: https://www.mei.edu/events/olympics-and-russian-invasion\n[76]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20m1d77m86o\n[77]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/26/lebanon-temporary-ceasefire-plan-hezbollah-israel\n[78]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/26/biden-macron-israel-hezbollah-ceasefire-lebanon\n[79]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanese-prime-minister-believes-ceasefire-between-israel-hezbollah-possible-2024-09-26/\n[80]: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4900649-israel-rejects-cease-fire-proposal-from-us-allies/\n\n<!-- youtube:9DfJK2BPw04 -->"
url: https://warfronts.pub/article/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-pager-sabotage-war.md
canonical: https://warfronts.pub/article/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-pager-sabotage-war
datePublished: 2026-03-04
dateModified: 2026-03-04
author:
  - name: Simon Whistler
    url: https://warfronts.pub/author/simon-whistler
publisher: Warfronts
image: "https://media.warfronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/9DfJK2BPw04/hero.jpg"
type: NewsArticle
contentHash: 3595a24263461b4163c43114c2b93593a9c4df75b9ef3b9ea473b2efac1852c7
tokens: 10810
summaryUrl: https://warfronts.pub/article/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-pager-sabotage-war.md.summary.md
---

<!-- aeo:section start="lede" -->
Israel and Hezbollah are at war. After nearly a year of saber-rattling, mutual escalation, and frenzied attempts by the international community to draw down hostilities, the border between Israel and its northern neighbor Lebanon is now just as much a war zone as the Gaza Strip. Over the course of the last two weeks, the world has watched, transfixed, as mass sabotage attacks, waves of rocket assaults, and a crushing air offensive have taken what little hope remained for this part of the world, and stomped it down into the dirt. An unprecedented infiltration of Hezbollah’s communications network has laid the groundwork for what is almost certainly a new Israel-Hezbollah conflict, marking an intelligence feat that will be analyzed for decades. This is the story of how Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah started, how the initial phases unfolded, and the profound implications of the escalating hostilities.

<!-- aeo:section end="lede" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="key-takeaways" -->
## Key Takeaways
- On September 17, an Israeli sabotage operation detonated thousands of Hezbollah pagers across Lebanon.
- The explosive pagers were manufactured by an Israeli shell company called BAC Consulting under the Gold Apollo brand.
- A second wave of detonations targeted counterfeit Icom two-way radios used by Hezbollah operatives on September 18.
- Israeli commandoes executed an unprecedented ground raid in Masyaf, Syria, destroying a Hezbollah missile manufacturing facility on September 8.
- A targeted airstrike in Beirut killed Ibrahim Aqil, head of Hezbollah's elite Radwan fighting force, massively disrupting their command structure.
- September 23 marked the deadliest day in Lebanon since 1990, with 558 people killed during massive Israeli airstrikes against rocket infrastructure.

<!-- aeo:section end="key-takeaways" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-initial-pager-detonations-and-widespread-casualties" -->
## The Initial Pager Detonations and Widespread Casualties

The attack came without warning at approximately 3:30 PM local time all across Lebanon on Tuesday, September 17. At that time, thousands of handheld pager devices started beeping all at once, seemingly without any reason to cause concern—but certainly indicating an urgent enough notice that those pagers should be checked. Not every pager in Lebanon started going off at once; instead, just one type was receiving the message: a new pager model called the AR924. It was purportedly produced by a company called BAC Consulting, under the branding and distribution of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In Lebanon, the AR924 pager wasn’t just any other device picked up by random shoppers at the nearest electronics store. The people who carried that particular pager, for the most part, had been given the devices by a group that exerts supreme influence in Lebanon: the non-state militant organization, Hezbollah. Although Hezbollah had acquired its new pagers from a friendly-looking, trustworthy company from Taiwan, they either didn’t realize, or didn’t care, that the company BAC Consulting was the one that built the pagers—not Gold Apollo. What Hezbollah certainly didn’t find out until it was too late was that BAC Consulting—despite being based in Hungary—was an Israeli shell company. The people behind it happened to work for one of the most dangerous and ruthless intelligence organizations on the planet: the foreign intelligence service, Mossad. BAC Consulting did build normal pagers, and Hezbollah is an organization whose highest leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has insisted that his members use pagers for years, owing to suspicions that cell phones were too easily hijacked or exploited by Israel. Twelve people were reported dead in the immediate aftermath, after the small explosive devices concealed within Hezbollah's new pagers detonated following several seconds of a sustained beeping alert. Close to three thousand more were injured, including several hundred wounded critically. Because of the small size of the explosive devices—containing no more than a couple of ounces of a compound called PETN—they weren't nearly so fatal as to cause mass casualties in each individual blast. Instead, people standing near to a person who had been holding their pager when it blew were largely unharmed. Because of the signal emitting from the pager and the nature of the device itself, injuries came disproportionately to people's hands, eyes, faces, and the sides of their torsos, where they might have carried the devices on their hip. According to some reports, the devices beeped for a few seconds and then detonated when people were likely to be checking the message that had come in. According to others, the pagers beeped and showed an error code, only exploding when their users pressed the buttons to clear the code—thus further increasing the likelihood of people holding them in their hands, near to their faces, when the devices blew up. In possible support of that claim, it appears that not all of the explosions happened simultaneously. Instead, they continued for about half an hour once the attack began. Some 150 or more hospitals across Lebanon received victims of the attack, streaming in all at once with injuries of varying severity. Some among the twelve killed were civilians, including two children: the nine-year-old daughter of one Hezbollah member, and the eleven-year-old son of another. Also among those killed were multiple healthcare workers from Beirut who had used the pagers, and the son of a Lebanese parliamentarian who was loyal to the Hezbollah organization. They, like the vast majority of those injured, were Hezbollah members. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah later confirmed that about five thousand of the devices had been purchased and distributed to lower-ranking members of the organization. A large proportion of the wounded were in or around Beirut at the time of the attack. While a range of injuries were sustained by those who had been targeted, eye injuries were among the most common, second only to blown-off fingers and thumbs. One ophthalmologist at a Beirut hospital, Dr. Elias Warrak, attested that at his hospital, over sixty percent of patients had at least one eye removed. Dr. Warrak stated, "Some of the patients, we had to remove both eyes. It kills me. In my past 25 years in practice, I’ve never removed as many eyes as I did yesterday."

<!-- aeo:section end="the-initial-pager-detonations-and-widespread-casualties" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="intelligence-assessment-and-the-diplomatic-blindspot" -->
## Intelligence Assessment and the Diplomatic Blindspot

In the hours immediately after the attack, no nation or non-state actor took credit, but even before the dust had settled, experts all across the world were in agreement on who was most likely responsible. That would be the nation of Israel, the long-time archenemy of the Hezbollah organization. To be more precise, such an attack would have probably fallen under the domain of its most feared and ruthless spy agency, Mossad. At first, spokespeople for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the incident, in a move characteristic of Israeli institutions after a major intelligence feat like this one. By the following day, the Chief of Staff of the IDF, Herzi Halevi, admitted that "we have many capabilities that we have not yet activated…we have seen some of these things, it seems to me that we are well prepared and we are preparing these plans going forward." Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant publicly referred to the pager explosions as "excellent achievements" by the IDF and Israeli intelligence on the following day, and according to US officials, Israel quickly claimed credit for the attack in private conversations. The US, Israel’s primary international backer, attested that its own intelligence and political leaders had been given no indication of the impending attack before it began. Their only signal had been a vague and cryptic call from Israel's Minister of Defense to his colleague in the US, warning of an attack just minutes before it began. A visiting top advisor from America's Biden administration, Amos Hochstein, had been in Israel the day prior to the attack, and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, but was never told of the impending operation. The implications of Israel's infiltration and attack are complex and, in many ways, quite concerning. A nation involved in a long and quickly escalating conflict, against a non-state actor based on the soil of another sovereign nation, just secretly built and distributed some 5,000 well-camouflaged miniature explosive devices into the ranks of its adversary. They then performed a coordinated mass detonation that caused thousands of casualties, without any of its own personnel sustaining so much as a minor injury. That is one of the most complex, and most stunning intelligence infiltrations and sabotage attacks of all time, taking the time-tested assassination tool of planted explosives and employing it on an industrial scale.

<!-- aeo:section end="intelligence-assessment-and-the-diplomatic-blindspot" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="strategic-logic-and-preemptive-operations" -->
## Strategic Logic and Preemptive Operations

Discussion around the world was about more than Israel's sleight of hand. It was received partially with celebration from Israel's most ardent supporters, and partially with deep concern for both the nature of its tactics and the line of thinking that had brought Israel to that point. The sweeping nature of the attack, and the high rates of casualties among non-fighting Hezbollah personnel and civilians, led to condemnation for its indiscriminate nature. However, like the follow-on attacks by Israel against Hezbollah, and like so many of the IDF’s attacks on Hamas in Gaza, this pager attack was targeted, even if on a large scale. But what it also was, was an attack that accepted astronomically high risk of collateral damage, deaths or injuries of children and bystanders, and deaths or injuries of medical personnel exempted from such attacks by international law. Israel has a long history of concocting operations to degrade the capabilities of its adversaries, including prior booby-trap attacks like planting bombs in Hamas cell phones, sabotage attacks against Iran’s nuclear program, and international airstrikes killing the leaders of enemy organizations. Recently, Israel has engaged in more direct assaults on Hezbollah's support network. In one particularly eye-catching operation on September 8th of this year, Israeli commandoes carried out a raid in the Syrian town of Masyaf in Hama province. The nearly unprecedented ground raid via helicopter airdrop saw dozens of special-forces operatives breach and destroy a critical facility that manufactures short- and medium-range missiles for Hezbollah. Several Iranian special-forces commandoes were purportedly taken captive, and substantial sensitive intelligence was extracted. Israel's destruction of the several thousand Hezbollah pagers might appear at first glance as if it had been designed with intentions of disrupting the early stage of a Hezbollah defense and causing unexpected mass casualties to clear the way for an Israeli assault. However, according to some sources within Syria, the pager attack itself was executed on Tuesday the 17th not because of advantageous timing, but because Israeli officials had feared that Hezbollah might have discovered the operation. According to one US official speaking to Axios, Israel had described its pager explosions after the fact to the US as a "use it or lose it" opportunity. After Israeli intelligence had raised concerns to Israel’s leaders that Hezbollah might find the explosives, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his civil and military leaders signed off on an immediate attack instead. Emphasizing the reality of the situation, Hezbollah’s mid-level leaders were still distributing their new pagers to their underlings within just hours of the attack, indicating no widespread suspicion further down the chain of command. The attack and its impact constituted a difficult new reality for Hezbollah: that Israel had laid traps in unexpected and potentially shocking ways, leaving the group fundamentally unprepared for what might come next.

<!-- aeo:section end="strategic-logic-and-preemptive-operations" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-second-wave-of-device-detonations" -->
## The Second Wave of Device Detonations

Israel, now knowing full well that it had created that perception across Hezbollah and across Lebanon, had a golden opportunity to reinforce the degree to which it could impose its will on Hezbollah while the group remained unable to strike back. Israel’s next move came one day after the pager attacks, on Wednesday, September 18th, in what amounted to a near carbon-copy repeat attack. This time, the handheld electronic devices in Israel’s crosshairs weren’t pagers but two-way radios, or walkie-talkies, used by Hezbollah military and civil operatives. The two-way radios were counterfeits, made to look like a particular model manufactured by the Icom company, but clearly not actual Icoms, as that model's production and the production of their batteries had been discontinued about a decade ago. The ones Hezbollah had in its possession had been obtained by the group at about the same time as its new pagers, and Israel's choice to detonate the devices was likely due to the same use-it or lose-it concern they had cited for their pager attack. Notably, several residential solar power systems and biometric fingerprint readers also exploded across Lebanon, although it remains unclear whether those were separate explosions or triggered by nearby handheld radio explosions. This time, there were far fewer explosions, on the scale of hundreds rather than thousands, but the death toll was nearly double what it had been in the pager attack, rising to 25 by the following day. That may have been a byproduct of more powerful explosives in the somewhat larger devices, or a byproduct of the higher incidence rate of their users raising the devices to their heads before detonation occurred. A majority of those injured, however, appeared to have injuries primarily to their stomachs and hands. Over six hundred others were wounded, including some at a funeral organized by Hezbollah for those killed during the pager explosions of the prior day. Casualties were concentrated not just in Beirut but in southern Lebanon, likely indicating a higher incidence rate of the devices being used by Hezbollah's militant members, who have been operating in that area for months and launching frequent small-scale attacks on Israel. But the lower casualty numbers also reflected the fact that many of the radios were still in warehouse storage, kept aside in advance of a potential full-scale war with Israel—further reflecting that Israel likely detonated its bombs prematurely to do what damage they could, rather than see them found out during investigations after the pager attack a day prior.

<!-- aeo:section end="the-second-wave-of-device-detonations" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="shifting-the-center-of-gravity-to-northern-israel" -->
## Shifting the Center of Gravity to Northern Israel

Zoom out from the specifics of the operation, and the writing has been on the wall for several weeks that Israel was looking to shift its military's attention away from the war in Gaza and toward Lebanon. Hezbollah's military threat has been a primary concern for Israel stemming partly from Hezbollah's near-daily attacks into Israel in solidarity with Hamas, and partly from the results of those attacks. Most of Hezbollah's potential to do harm is concentrated in and around northern Israel, where its short-range rockets can sometimes carry out successful strikes before Israel's close-range air-defense system, the Iron Dome, can intercept them. As a result, tens of thousands of Israelis have been forced to leave their homes and communities as internally displaced people, and their return to the north has become a primary concern for the Israeli government. With northern Israel in mind, leaders within Israel spent weeks signaling a turn northward. The country's foremost opposition leader, Benny Gantz, stated on September 8th that "We have enough forces to deal with Gaza and we should concentrate on what is going on in the north [...] the time of the north has come and I think we are late on this." Defense Minister Yoav Gallant noted that same day that the shift of the center of gravity could happen quickly. Just one day before the pager attacks, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the safe return of northern Israel's residents to their homes had been made an official war goal by his security cabinet. Over the subsequent weeks, Israel began to reposition major military assets to its northern regions, including the formidable 98th Division and its paratrooper and shock troop elements. But for Israel to launch a war with Hezbollah is a difficult prospect, and one where the barriers are far greater than they were in Gaza after October 7. Hezbollah is a similarly committed, similarly asymmetric foe, but they are far larger and far more complicated to dismantle. Among the group's assets are supposedly tens of thousands of foot soldiers, including thousands of combat veterans with intense experience fighting in Syria, and high-level commandoes who Israeli special operators regard as direct peers in battle. Both Israel and Hezbollah know that Hezbollah's ability to meet Israel as a large-scale asymmetric insurgency is contingent on its ability to use the element of surprise to launch weapons against Israel, and lure the IDF onto Lebanese soil where Hezbollah fighters can present a much greater threat. Israel has increasingly shown that it has the ability to disrupt Hezbollah's capacity for surprise attacks without sending its troops into Lebanon directly. Conventional wisdom held for months that the best way to get Hezbollah to back down would be a ceasefire in Gaza. But with ceasefire talks at a stalemate, Israel chose the middle path: taking a series of military actions designed to make it increasingly harder for Hezbollah to justify engaging in a war where it appeared underprepared, underequipped, or outmatched.

<!-- aeo:section end="shifting-the-center-of-gravity-to-northern-israel" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-aerial-offensive-and-decapitation-strikes" -->
## The Aerial Offensive and Decapitation Strikes

The following days would show that even if Israel hadn’t sprung its trap exactly as planned, it would capitalize nonetheless. September 19th saw wide-ranging and intense Israeli airstrikes all across Lebanon. These were among the most severe since the October 7 attack, and over a two-hour span, they saw Israeli jets strike hundreds of firing sites where multiple-rocket-launchers were stationed. According to the IDF, those rocket launchers were loaded and pointed at Israel at the time of the airstrikes, and a massive rocket attack against Israeli territory was purportedly imminent. Southern Lebanon took a shellacking, aligning with Hezbollah’s use of short-range rockets. That same day, Israeli warplanes sent huge sonic booms thundering across Beirut, so massive that they could be heard during a televised address by Hassan Nasrallah, who had insisted that Israel’s bombings crossed all red lines. On the twentieth, Israeli airstrikes targeted personnel, executing only Israel's second airstrike on the Lebanese capital this year. The strike targeted an apartment block, killing forty-five people, including sixteen of the group's members and ten Hezbollah commanders. Two in particular were especially important: Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wehbe. Aqil, the strike's primary target, was believed to be the head of Hezbollah's elite fighting force, Radwan, while doing double-duty as Hezbollah's Head of Operations and triple-duty as an informal Chief of Staff for the organization. The United States had offered a seven-million-dollar reward for information about him after he had helped plan the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Beirut and another 1983 attack that killed 241 American military personnel. With his death, Hezbollah suffered mass disruption to its command structure, losing a leader not easily replaced. Across the following two days, Israel continued its strikes like clockwork, bombarding about 180 more targets on September 21st, including thousands of individual rocket launch tubes. Hezbollah launched strikes of its own; on Saturday the 21st, Hezbollah launched a total of 150 rockets, cruise missiles, and drones in an assault. On Sunday, Hezbollah claimed that it had hit the Ramat David Airbase in Israel with two barrages of missiles and attacked a separate military-industrial complex near Haifa. Despite these retaliations, Israel vowed to hammer home the reality of Hezbollah’s difficult situations via military means for as long as was necessary, setting the stage for an unprecedented escalation.

<!-- aeo:section end="the-aerial-offensive-and-decapitation-strikes" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="the-deadliest-day-and-the-onset-of-full-scale-conflict" -->
## The Deadliest Day and the Onset of Full-Scale Conflict

Monday, September 23rd, became the single deadliest day of attacks by Israel against Lebanon since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. On that day, Lebanese citizens in the southern parts of the country received a video statement from Benjamin Netanyahu warning them to leave areas where Hezbollah may be storing weapons, insisting that Israel's war was not with them, but with Hezbollah. The IDF sent about 80,000 text messages to Lebanese numbers, urging immediate evacuation. Southern Lebanon became an evacuation zone, with thousands trying to escape on gridlocked roads. With Israeli warplanes streaking overhead in a massive show of force, the bombs began to drop. Israel claimed successful strikes on over one thousand targets, including a targeted strike in Beirut intended for a senior Hezbollah official. As of the following Tuesday, Lebanon’s health ministry stated that the death toll stood at 558 people, including no fewer than fifty children. 1,835 more people were reported wounded, making it Lebanon’s deadliest day for violence since the country’s fifteen-year civil war concluded in 1990. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that Israel had taken out tens of thousands of rockets and precise munitions, destroying what Hezbollah had built over twenty years. Senior Israeli officials denied that their intent was to clear out land in order to surge IDF ground troops and create a buffer zone. Instead, they aimed to degrade Hezbollah’s ability to attack Israel with rockets, force its fighters away from the border, and destroy infrastructure Hezbollah militants had placed in southern Lebanon. The events of September 23rd were the deadliest and most stunning by an order of magnitude since Hezbollah began its regular attacks on Israel on October 8th of the previous year. The allies of both Israel and Hezbollah released their respective statements on the strikes, with the United States announcing it would position additional troops at forward positions in the Middle East, while international organizations emphasized the immediate need for de-escalation. After months of trying to avoid such a day, September 23rd marked a final, undeniable signal to the world that the moment had arrived. Israel and Hezbollah were now, for all intents and purposes, at war.

<!-- aeo:section end="the-deadliest-day-and-the-onset-of-full-scale-conflict" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="frequently-asked-questions" -->
## Frequently Asked Questions

### How were the explosive pagers introduced into Hezbollah's supply chain?

The pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting, an Israeli shell company based in Hungary operating under the Gold Apollo brand from Taiwan. Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah had directed members to use pagers for years because cell phones were considered too easily exploited by Israel, so the group acquired roughly 5,000 AR924 pagers from what appeared to be a trustworthy Taiwanese supplier — unaware that the manufacturer was a Mossad front.

### Why did Israel detonate the pagers on September 17 rather than waiting for a more strategic moment?

According to a US official speaking to Axios, Israel described the timing as a "use it or lose it" opportunity. Israeli intelligence had raised concerns that Hezbollah might have discovered the explosive devices, so Prime Minister Netanyahu and his civil and military leaders authorized an immediate detonation rather than risk the operation being uncovered. Hezbollah's mid-level leaders were still distributing the pagers to their members within hours of the attack, indicating there was no widespread suspicion lower down the chain of command.

### What were the casualty patterns from the pager and walkie-talkie attacks?

The September 17 pager explosions killed 12 people and injured close to 3,000, with injuries concentrated in the hands, eyes, faces, and torsos of those holding the devices. Eye injuries were among the most common; one Beirut ophthalmologist reported removing eyes from more than sixty percent of his patients that day. The September 18 walkie-talkie detonations, involving hundreds of devices rather than thousands, killed 25 people despite affecting fewer targets, possibly because users raised the larger radios toward their heads before detonation.

### What was the significance of the September 20 airstrike in Beirut?

The strike on an apartment block killed 45 people including 16 Hezbollah members and 10 commanders. Its primary target was Ibrahim Aqil, believed to be the head of Hezbollah's elite Radwan fighting force, its Head of Operations, and an informal Chief of Staff for the organization. The United States had offered a $7 million reward for information about Aqil following his alleged role in planning the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Beirut. His death severely disrupted Hezbollah's command structure.

### What made September 23 the deadliest day in Lebanon since 1990?

Israel claimed successful strikes on over one thousand targets across southern Lebanon that day, including rocket infrastructure that Defense Minister Gallant said Hezbollah had built over twenty years. Lebanon's health ministry reported 558 people killed, including at least fifty children, and 1,835 wounded — making it Lebanon's deadliest day since the country's civil war ended in 1990. Israel sent approximately 80,000 text messages to Lebanese numbers urging evacuation before the strikes began.

<!-- aeo:section end="frequently-asked-questions" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="related-coverage" -->
## Related Coverage
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<!-- aeo:section end="related-coverage" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="sources" -->
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[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-explosives-hezbollahs-taiwan-made-pagers-sources-say-2024-09-18/
[2]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/17/hezbollah-pager-explosions-israel-tensions
[3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7xnelvpepo
[4]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/17/world/israel-hamas-war-news
[5]: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23452/hezbollah-pagers-explode-across-lebanon-causing-nearly-3-000-casualties
[6]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/17/hezbollah-pager-explosion-israel-didnt-tell-biden-administration
[7]: https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-hezbollah-pager-explosion-e9493409a0648b846fdcadffdb02d71e
[8]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hezbollah-pagers-explode-israel-taiwan-hungary-gold-apollo-bac-consulting/
[9]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-pagers-explosives.html
[10]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah.html
[11]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dozens-hezbollah-members-wounded-lebanon-when-pagers-exploded-sources-witnesses-2024-09-17/
[12]: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/g-s1-23812/lebanon-israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah-international-law
[13]: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/lebanon-pager-attacks-bear-hallmarks-sinister-dystopian-nightmare-witness
[14]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/09/exploding-pagers-and-radios-terrifying-violation-international-law-say-un
[15]: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/middle-east-device-attack-violate-international-law-advocates-113882402
[16]: https://abcnews.go.com/International/israel-hand-manufacturing-pagers-exploded-lebanon-source/story?id=113851347
[17]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hezbollah-pagers-explosions-what-now-rcna171602
[18]: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-820815
[19]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/18/hezbollah-pager-explosions-israel-suspicions
[20]: https://www.vox.com/world-politics/372772/hezbollah-israel-pagers-radios-lebanon
[21]: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cwyl9048gx8t
[22]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/hezbollah-explosions-attack-lebanon-walkie-talkies-pagers-b2615018.html
[23]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/18/explosions-linked-to-walkie-talkies-deaths-lebanon
[24]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/18/israel-detonates-hezbollah-walkie-talkies-second-wave-after-pager-attack
[25]: https://www.reuters.com/world/hezbollah-pager-explosions-live-2024-09-17/
[26]: https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-hezbollah-israel-exploding-pagers-8893a09816410959b6fe94aec124461b
[27]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/world/middleeast/israel-raid-syria-hezbollah.html
[28]: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/18/1200121029/lebanon-hezbollah-attacks-pager-communications-device
[29]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz04m913m49o
[30]: https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah-syria-ce6af3c2e6de0a0dddfae48634278288
[31]: https://www.barrons.com/news/israel-s-gantz-says-military-focus-needs-to-shift-to-lebanon-a432e627
[32]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cglkkrj94ldo
[33]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/16/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-gaza.html
[34]: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/09/israel-braces-possible-all-out-war-against-hezbollah-iran-proxies
[35]: https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240908-hezbollah-fires-rockets-israel-strikes-after-attack-kills-lebanon-emergency-workers
[36]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/10/middleeast/hezbollah-commander-killed-israeli-airstrike-intl-latam/index.html
[37]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-strikes-hezbollah-targets-lebanon-military-says-2024-08-25/
[38]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-jets-are-carrying-out-huge-sonic-booms-over-beirut-witness-2024-09-19/
[39]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/walkie-talkie-blasts-lebanon-japan-icom-israel-new-phase-war-hezbollah-rcna171773
[40]: https://abcnews.go.com/International/threat-israel-hezbollah-war-looms-after-lebanon-device/story?id=113833089
[41]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strikes-hit-multiple-targets-lebanon-2024-09-19/
[42]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/19/world/israel-hezbollah-gaza-hamas
[43]: https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-hezbollah-israel-mideast-tensions-attack-8ec89de2b117b52e2c09b19155e35d13
[44]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanons-hezbollah-confirms-top-military-commander-ibrahim-aqil-killed-israel-2024-09-20/
[45]: https://abcnews.go.com/International/100-rockets-fly-israel-hezbollah-world-leaders-urge/story?id=113867503
[46]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y9wyy9pr2o
[47]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/20/israel-strikes-hezbollah-military-commanders-beirut
[48]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strike-beirut-friday-killed-31-lebanese-ministry-says-2024-09-21/
[49]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollah-attacks-israeli-military-industry-complex-haifa-response-pager-blasts-2024-09-22/
[50]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-hezbollah-lebanon-attacks-haifa-west-bank-al-jazeera-rcna172130
[51]: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/22/g-s1-24085/dozens-of-rockets-fired-into-israel-from-lebanon-idf-says
[52]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/21/world/gaza-israel-hamas-hezbollah
[53]: https://apnews.com/article/israel-hezbollah-hamas-latest-22-september-2024-a593f6b84bb83a70480169bc94965e9a
[54]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollah-israel-exchange-heavy-fire-after-deadly-israeli-strike-2024-09-22/
[55]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3wy8kpy3eo
[56]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-says-it-is-striking-hezbollah-targets-lebanon-2024-09-23/
[57]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-evacuation-strikes-rcna172180
[58]: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-lebanon-hezbollah-e3ca9c83642056f962fdf76319e3b8de
[59]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/23/world/gaza-israel-hamas-hezbollah
[60]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-war-gaza-hamas-idf-airstrikes/
[61]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-it-is-preparing-attack-hezbollah-targets-bekaa-2024-09-23/
[62]: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-820063
[63]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hezbollah-exchange-fire-after-lebanon-suffers-huge-casualties-2024-09-24/
[64]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/24/middle-east-crisis-live-israel-lebanon-hezbollah-war-news#top-of-blog
[65]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/09/24/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-ibrahim-qubaisi-unga-biden-final-speech/
[66]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/world/middleeast/israel-lebanon-strikes-deaths.html
[67]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/25/world/israel-gaza-hamas-hezbollah
[68]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/25/israel-lebanon-strikes-hezbollah-commander-ibrahim-qubaisi-latest-news-death-toll
[69]: https://apnews.com/article/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-gaza-news-09-25-2024-62cb173728d341c845bff9859addc7a5
[70]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93pg1qpxxzo
[71]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hezbollahs-tunnels-flexible-command-weather-israels-deadly-blows-2024-09-25/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Daily-Briefing&utm_term=092524&user_email=4c30933ca127ef02cbd8fcb794471a2311d7f12055c9aeda86a10d88cd3f9c59&lctg=6422d13ff77d798afe06361d
[72]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-escalating.html?utm_source=dailybrief&utm_content=20240923&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyBrief2024Sep23&utm_term=DailyNewsBrief
[73]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/us/politics/israel-hezbollah-pager-attacks.html
[74]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-hezbollah-pager-attack.html
[75]: https://www.mei.edu/events/olympics-and-russian-invasion
[76]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20m1d77m86o
[77]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/26/lebanon-temporary-ceasefire-plan-hezbollah-israel
[78]: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/26/biden-macron-israel-hezbollah-ceasefire-lebanon
[79]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanese-prime-minister-believes-ceasefire-between-israel-hezbollah-possible-2024-09-26/
[80]: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4900649-israel-rejects-cease-fire-proposal-from-us-allies/

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