Exploding pagers signal dilemmas for both Hezbollah and Israel

The dilemma now for Hezbollah will be how to retaliate to a level satisfactory to its supporters and patrons, while avoiding the descent to all-out war that a too-successful response might bring.

By Jonathan Spyer, Middle East Forum

The killing of 11 Lebanese Hezbollah members and the wounding of thousands more when their pagers simultaneously exploded earlier this week represents an obvious tactical triumph for Israel (or whoever carried it out; it’s unlikely to have been the Fijian or Norwegian security services, and using a similar process of deduction, I invite readers to draw their own conclusions).

The sight of members of the Iran-supported Shia Islamist group suddenly collapsing in agony while performing mundane daily tasks was met with great amusement in the circles of the movement’s many enemies across the region.

Displaying the somewhat gleeful and malicious humour which characterizes all sides in the Levant, a variety of memes mocking the hapless victims of the grim beeper soon proliferated.

Hilarity aside, the operation displays the extent to which Hezbollah has been thoroughly penetrated by its opposite number. The organisation will no doubt be now undertaking a thorough review of its security arrangements.

It will be aware that the capabilities on display this week (and in earlier killings of high profile movement officials such as Fuad Shukr and Mohammed Qassem al-Shaer) can be activated in ways far more kinetic than have yet been witnessed.

But while the episode displays Hezbollah’s vulnerabilities, and will bring reassurance to Israelis regarding the continued tactical flair and capacities of their security structures, it does not alter the essential elements of the picture regarding Israel’s ongoing confrontation with Hezbollah on its northern border.

A core and clearly established element of this picture, after all, is that Israel consistently displays superior tactical capacities to its Iran-supported enemy.

But these capacities, up to and including the latest demonstration, have not enabled Jerusalem to decisively alter the strategic picture, which gives less reason for cheer.

As of now, as a result of Hezbollah’s daily missile and drone attacks across the border, Israel has effectively ceded control of a roughly five-kilometer deep territory stretching the entire length of the Israel-Lebanese border.

Around 60,000 Israelis formerly resident in this area have departed their homes. Few show any sign of returning until the situation is resolved.

If the guns cease firing but Hezbollah remains deployed down to the borderline, a large percentage of these individuals and their families look set to maintain their unwillingness to return to their former places of residence.

This is a situation quite without precedent in Israel’s history. It has ominous implications. The fact that a corresponding or larger number of Lebanese residents of their country’s south have also left their homes doesn’t even the score.

Hezbollah and its masters in Teheran demonstrably have operated and operate with complete indifference to the fate of the local civilian populations in the areas they control. Their project, unlike that of Israel, does not depend on the consent of the governed.

In the exchanges across the border, Israel enjoys a clear upper hand. According to the current butcher’s bill, around 460 Hezbollah fighters have been killed at Israel’s hands since the present round of hostilities commenced on October 8, 2023.

Seventy-nine members of other organisations have also been killed, along with an untallied additional number of civilians. Israel has lost 20 soldiers and 26 civilians. But again, this doesn’t solve the problem of the depopulated north.

The return of the residents of northern border communities has now been defined as a war aim by Israel.

Logic leads inexorably to the conclusion that only a major rearrangement of the situation north of the frontier — i.e. pushing Hezbollah’s forces away from the borderline — can achieve this goal. But this brings with it a number of dilemmas.

The only instrument that can achieve this objective is the ground forces. But many of the ground units which would be needed for such a mission are currently exhausted and depleted after a year’s fighting in Gaza.

Efforts at rapid replenishment are currently taking place. But this will take time. More fundamentally, US re-supply would be needed for the successful carrying out of such an operation.

But all indications suggest that Washington is determined to avoid conflict in the run up to the US elections in November.

Should an Israeli ground maneuver be attempted to push Hezbollah 7-10 kilometers north, to the line of the Litani River, it may be assumed that the opposition would be fierce and attrition heavy.

Is Israeli society, after the traumas of the last year, adequately prepared to launch such a venture?

Furthermore, holding such an area afterwards, to keep Hezbollah’s fighters away from the border, would bring challenges of its own. Technology has advanced, of course, from the last time Israel sought to maintain such a zone, in the 1985-2000 period.

Still, would a permanent IDF presence be required? Are there local partners available, of any kind? How would a repeat performance of Israel’s unsuccessful counter insurgency, which led to the eventual withdrawal of IDF troops in 2000, be avoided?

The current noises in Israel regarding a ground operation should be taken seriously. The status quo on the northern border is not infinitely sustainable. Still, it is unclear if Israel has yet formulated adequate answers to the above questions.

Of course, Hezbollah has its own dilemmas. The affair of the exploding beepers is a deep humiliation for an organisation that has always prided itself on conveying an image of competence and menace.

It will surely be seeking revenge. Yet both Hezbollah and its Iranian masters have sought to avoid all-out confrontation against Israel over the last year. Iran does not wish to play its most significant asset in support of Hamas, a much more minor client.

The dilemma now for Hezbollah will be how to retaliate to a level satisfactory to its supporters and patrons, while avoiding the descent to all-out war that a too-successful response might bring.

In its most recent retaliation, following the killing of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah solved this dilemma by launching a failed, minor attack on Israeli military and intelligence installations in central Israel — and then claiming a fictional success.

It may well be that the extent of the vulnerabilities displayed this week will require a more determined response.

But then Hezbollah will need to take into account that such a response risks leading to an escalation towards precisely the all-out conflict that it doesn’t want. Neither side has an easy set of decisions before it.

Hezbollah will now face the additional challenge of finding a new way to facilitate communication between its operatives.

In the past, Mid-Eastern terror groups have opted for ever more low-tech means of communication to get round their enemies’ technological superiority.

In this regard, Hezbollah planners will no doubt be contemplating that past Israeli employment of exploding pens may make even this option more complicated than it might initially appear.

ground invasionHezbollahIDFpagers