Motive unclear in apparent Israeli attack on Lebanese militia’s pagers

Of all the mysteries surrounding a sophisticated and startling attack against an avowed adversary of Israel, one question stands out: Why?

After hundreds of hand-held pagers used by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah exploded near-simultaneously on Tuesday, killing at least 12 people, including a child, and injuring several thousand others, analysts questioned what benefit Israel had derived — if it indeed carried out the mass detonations, as it is widely presumed to have done.

Those questions sharpened Wednesday as the attack intensified with a new round of deadly detonations of hand-held radios and other electronic devices. Lebanon’s health ministry reported at least 14 killed and hundreds injured, with the fresh explosions drawing condemnation from around the world.

Israel’s government has refrained from any public comment, but U.S. officials, while denying advance detailed knowledge of the wave of blasts, told multiple news outlets that Israeli intelligence clandestinely planted explosives in the pagers before they were shipped to Lebanon.

U.S. officials, keen to distance themselves from the attack, also issued warnings to Israel and, through proxies, to Hezbollah and Iran to refrain from escalating military operations in retaliation. Both Israel and Hezbollah have long been threatening a broader war along the border between Israel and Lebanon, as the two exchange regular rocket fire. A broader war, however, would be dramatically different.

On the face of it, the motivation of the electronic device attacks seemed clear enough: Hezbollah and Israel are archenemies, antagonists in a smoldering border war that for months has run parallel to the far more destructive and deadly confrontation between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Hezbollah has declared itself to be acting in solidarity with Hamas, which for months has tried to pull its Iran-backed allies into a wider war with Israel.

The nearly year-old Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in the territory. It has reduced much of the seaside enclave to ruins, and left Israel internationally isolated over the immense suffering of Palestinian civilians.

Tuesday’s attack did wreak havoc on Hezbollah’s internal communication capabilities, analysts said. Speaking before the new round of blasts on Wednesday, they added that the setback to the militant group was likely limited in both scope and duration.

The Tuesday attack “undermines Hezbollah’s operational capacity to communicate securely with its personnel,” researchers Yaakov Lapin and Tal Beeri wrote on the website of Alma, an Israeli think tank specializing in the conflict on Israel’s northern border.

Even so, they assessed that in all likelihood, the group could still engage in “an extensive attack on Israel in the immediate time frame,” if it wished.

As a display of sheer technological prowess, the pager plot —a sophisticated operation that analysts said would have required months of planning —was seen by many Israelis as a much-needed image-burnishing for the country’s security establishment.

Hamas’ surprise attack on southern Israel last Oct. 7, which triggered the current war in Gaza, was branded a massive intelligence failure on Israel’s part — one for which a number of senior security chiefs, but notably not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have accepted responsibility.

The Hamas-led attacks killed about 1,200 people inside Israel, and another 250 were seized as hostages and taken to Gaza.

As the war’s first anniversary approaches, the pager attack allowed Israel’s security officials to send “a message: ‘We messed up, but we’re not dead,’’” French defense and strategy consultant Pierre Servent told the French news agency AFP.

Aside from any perceived domestic morale boost in Israel, however, some observers questioned whether the pager blasts would ultimately backfire, earning yet more international opprobrium and setting the stage for retaliation by Hezbollah.

“This is not the kind of incident that ends quietly in the Middle East,” military analyst Amos Harel wrote in the Haaretz daily newspaper. He cited the highly personal and humiliating nature of the pager strikes, which flooded Lebanese hospitals with wounded individuals, many with fingers blown off or injured eyes.

Some suggested the pager plot was intended as an explicit message to Hezbollah that Israel has undisclosed technology-driven capabilities it can yet wield against the group, whose conventional military strength dwarfs that of Hamas.

Firefighters stand outside a damaged mobile shop after what is believed to be the result of a walkie-talkie exploding inside it, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, on Wednesday.

(Mohammad Zaatari / Associated Press)

Such a warning comes as Hezbollah, too, edges into uncharted territory regarding remote attacks.

The pager blasts came the same day that Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency disclosed a failed Hezbollah-organized bid last year to assassinate a senior former Israeli official — identified in news reports as ex-Defense Minister and army chief of staff Moshe Yaalon — using a powerful explosive planted in a Tel Aviv park. Another planned attack with a similar profile was also foiled, the Shin Bet said.

But any notion of the pager explosions as a carefully timed and precisely calibrated message of deterrence was undercut by media reports Wednesday that Israel made a hasty decision to set off the blasts, believing that the plot was in the early stages of being uncovered.

In a diplomatic context, the timing of the attack appeared to be yet another slap by Netanyahu at Israel’s closest ally, the United States. The blasts came as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to Cairo to try to nudge along Egyptian mediation for a cease-fire and hostage-release accord between Israel and Hamas.

U.S. officials say that Israeli attacks in Lebanon or elsewhere weaken their hand as they attempt to negotiate with Arab allies and, through them, Hamas. The U.S. says it warns all sides they are playing with fire as they risk a wider escalation of warfare, but it is difficult to predict actions by any party.

Peppered with questions at a news conference, Blinken said the Biden administration was still gathering information about the episode, and made renewed appeals against a broadening of regional conflict.

On the eve of Tuesday’s attacks, the Israeli prime minister met with an envoy from President Biden, Amos Hochstein, who sought to steer Israel away from a major escalation in Lebanon, which Israel has hinted of in recent days.

In that meeting, Netanyahu offered no clue of the chaos to be unleashed a few hours later, Israeli news reports said.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday expressed alarm over the blasts, saying they posed “a serious risk of dramatic escalation” between Israel and Hezbollah.

“Everything must be done to avoid that escalation,” he said.

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report.