Deadly Pager Blasts in Lebanon Ratchet Up Israel-Hezbollah Tension

(Bloomberg) -- The audacious attack in Lebanon that saw thousands of people injured and some killed when their pagers exploded has increased the tension between Israel and militant group Hezbollah, which vowed to retaliate.

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Hezbollah, the Lebanese government and Iran all blamed Israel for the near-simultaneous blasts on Tuesday afternoon. Many of those injured were members of the Tehran-backed organization, which has been trading cross-border fire with Israel for almost a year.

Yet some civilians were hurt as the devices exploded in supermarkets and homes, and two children were among the 12 people killed, according to Lebanese officials.

Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility, and its officials are refusing to speak about the incident — which is often the case when its intelligence services are blamed for attacks on the country’s enemies.

Hospitals in the Lebanese capital of Beirut quickly filled up with people rushing in with injuries that included having their fingers blown off. One widely shown piece of footage showed a man getting a pager out his of pocket at a supermarket checkout till as it beeped, and the device exploding soon after. It was unclear if he or the two nearby people were harmed.

The explosions took place around 3:30 p.m. mainly in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. About 200 people are in critical conditions, according to Lebanese media.

Hezbollah, designated a terrorist group by the US, and Israel have been fighting since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Gaza in October. Hezbollah has been acting in solidarity with Hamas — both are supported by Iran — and demanding a cease-fire before it stops.

Tens of thousands of civilians have had to flee their homes in northern Israel and southern Lebanon amid the cross-border missile and drone strikes. Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters have been killed and around 50 Israelis.

“Hezbollah will retaliate,” Harel Menashri, a cybersecurity expert who used to work for Shin Bet, Israel’s internal-intelligence agency, told Bloomberg. “They will also learn from this. They are a serious organization and very determined.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told one of US President Joe Biden’s senior Middle East envoys this week that an all-out conflict between Israeli forces and Hezbollah is becoming more likely. Diplomacy looks like it’s failing and war may be the only way to stop Hezbollah’s attacks and enable Israeli civilians to return to the northern border area, he told Amos Hochstein.

The Israeli cabinet agreed on Monday to make the return of those displaced people an official war objective.

The US is trying to calm the situation and Hochstein, who handles the Israel-Lebanon file for the White House, told Netanyahu that a deeper conflict is not in Israel’s interest and would only risk a region-wide war, Bloomberg reported.

The US was taken aback by Tuesday’s attack and while it believes it was tactically impressive, it doesn’t think Israel will benefit strategically, according to a person familiar with American foreign policy.

European Union officials believe it was a reckless move amid an already very tense situation, one person from the bloc said.

Biden’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, is in Egypt on Wednesday to meet the country’s president and try to advance stalled cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas. He is not expected to travel to Israel.

“We’ve been very clear and remain very clear about the importance of all parties avoiding any steps that could further escalate the conflict that we’re trying to resolve in Gaza,” Blinken said in Cairo when asked about the pager attacks.

They will bring Israel and Hezbollah “closer to the brink of an all-out war,” Amos Harel, an Israeli military analyst, said in a column in Haaretz, a local newspaper. “Israel is waiting for Hezbollah’s response. If it decides to respond deep inside Israel’s territory, it is possible that the meaning will be a deterioration into war.”

Hezbollah is far more powerful than Hamas, with around 100,000 fighters and at least as many missiles and rockets, according to Israeli intelligence estimates. Many Israelis fear the group could overwhelm their country’s vaunted air defenses in the event of a total war.

Until now, Israel and Hezbollah have largely limited their attacks to military targets, usually near the border area. Tensions have spiked significantly on several occasions, including when 12 youngsters playing football were killed by a rocket in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights in July. In response, Israel assassinated a senior Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, via an airstike on Beirut.

If their skirmishes turned into a full-on war, the US and Iran — which sees Hezbollah as the most important of its several allied militant groups in the Middle East — would likely be dragged in.

Oil prices jumped late on Tuesday as traders grew more concerned about regional geopolitical tensions. They largely reversed those gains on Wednesday, with Brent crude trading at $73 a barrel as of 2 p.m. in London.

The United Nations’ main official for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, called the attacks “an extremely concerning escalation.” She added that, under international humanitarian law, “civilians are not a target and must be protected at all times.”

Speculation was rife in media and the tech world as to how the explosions could have been orchestrated. Many cybersecurity experts believe the most likely scenario was that explosives were planted in the devices, which Hezbollah has long used, believing they are harder for Israel to infiltrate given their low-tech nature.

“There is often a paradox whereby the more primitive your device, the more protected you are from hostile penetration,” said Ami Ayalon, a retired head of Shin Bet and a former minister. “To hack a cellphone network, all you need to be is ‘in the air’. To hack a pager network, you need to be inside the device.”

The Taiwanese company Gold Apollo Co., whose brand appears on pagers that exploded in Lebanon, said a company based in Hungary was responsible for manufacturing those models.

Gold Apollo said it has had an agreement with BAC Consulting in Budapest for several years under which the Hungarian company can use its brand in designated regions. BAC didn’t immediately respond to emails and phone calls for comment.

--With assistance from Dan Williams and Iain Marlow.

(Updates with comments from US and EU officials.)

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