The Exploding Pagers of Lebanon

It felt like a science-fiction film, one Lebanese friend told me. At almost exactly the same moment—3:30 p.m. today—pagers exploded all over Lebanon, leaving hideous gashes and wounds on the heads, hands, and hips of their owners.

The significance of the attack quickly became clear: The pagers were being used by members of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant movement that has been fighting an undeclared war with Israel since last October.

Israel has been using digital technologies to target members of Hezbollah for months, but today’s attack was unlike anything seen before and appears to have struck a new kind of blow. It maimed thousands of fighters and possibly crippled the group’s ability to respond if a broader conflict breaks out soon. It also exposed the identity of the victims, shattering Hezbollah’s careful efforts to maintain the anonymity of its members.

Even in a country that has long been accustomed to war, the intimate nature of this attack was deeply disturbing. Video clips from around Lebanon showed scenes of quiet daily life turning instantly into horror. At a fruit and vegetable market, a man in a blue baseball cap and a short-sleeve shirt is seen selecting green plums when an explosion knocks him to the floor, and he starts screaming in pain. In another clip, a woman is counting money at a cash register when the man in front of her is thrown violently to the ground.

The country’s hospitals were quickly overwhelmed with so many bleeding victims that some were laid out on floors and in corridors. The Lebanese health ministry said this evening that nine people had been killed and 2,750 had been wounded, but hundreds were in critical condition and the death toll seemed likely to rise. Hezbollah officials said that at least six members were among the dead.

Amal Saad, a Lebanese analyst who has studied the group for decades, told me that Hezbollah’s supporters are “extremely demoralized” by the attack. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, urged his followers to stop using cell phones in February. Many appear to have switched to pagers, which may have seemed safer. In previous conflicts Hezbollah prided itself on the effectiveness of its simple communications network, which relied partly on pagers.

Many Lebanese are frightened that the pager attack is the prelude to a full-scale war in their country. Israeli officials have been saying for months that Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, which have forced some 20,000 Israelis to flee the northern part of the country, are unacceptable, and that it will be necessary to destroy Hezbollah. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Monday that the fading prospects of diplomacy were leaving military action as the only option.

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But the timing of the attack raised questions about Israel’s intentions. “Why would Israel reveal this card now, rather than using it during a war?” Saad asked. “Obviously, Hezbollah will now change its entire telecoms system.” She said that the pager attack could indicate that Israel didn’t intend to start a full-scale war, despite its recent threats. Another possibility is that Israel feared the modified pagers were about to be discovered, and was forced to launch the attack early.

The attack could also have been meant to satisfy domestic pressures inside of Israel, or to preempt a Hezbollah attack that Israel might have thought was imminent. On Tuesday the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, said it had foiled a Hezbollah assassination plot against a former senior Israeli official.

The technology used to detonate the pagers was the subject of intense speculation among Lebanese I spoke with on Tuesday evening. Some rumors suggested that hackers were to blame, or a mass malfunction. But most observers seemed convinced that Israel had found a way to compromise the pagers, which appear to have arrived in Lebanon in recent months. The batteries used in pagers can catch fire, but are not capable by themselves of causing the deadly explosions that took place Tuesday.

Photographs posted on Lebanese social media sites showed burnt-out pagers that appear to have been made by a small Taiwan-based company called Apollo Wireless. The pagers could have been altered or had explosives added to them at any point along the supply chain, I was told by Muhammad al Basha, an analyst with the Navanti Group, an international research and security company.

Whatever the explanation, Tuesday’s attack achieved one of Israel’s most important goals: it left its enemies feeling that nowhere was safe.