Israel’s communications attacks push Hezbollah into an uncomfortable corner

Hostilities between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah turned cinematic on September 17 when thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives detonated simultaneously. Hezbollah announced that twelve of its operatives were killed. Thousands more were injured, with some left blinded or missing limbs. The next day, on September 18, Hezbollah suffered another humiliating blow. This time, the explosives weren’t pagers but walkie-talkies. Hezbollah subsequently announced that a further twenty-five operatives were killed and 450 wounded. Israel, which never officially claimed the attacks, was the most obvious culprit.

Hours before the first attack, Israel’s Shin Bet disclosed that it had thwarted a Hezbollah plot targeting a senior former Israeli defense official, recalling that Israel had assassinated Hezbollah’s chief of staff, Fuad Shukr, on July 30. The communications attacks might be an attempt to soften the ground for a larger Israeli operation—or to provoke retaliation from Hezbollah that would necessitate one. Hezbollah will almost certainly respond, but its leaders are still trying to calibrate to avoid an all-out war. That is becoming an increasingly untenable position.

Almost a month after Shukr’s assassination, Hezbollah tried and failed to avenge his death. Almost immediately, the organization’s propaganda organs sought to cover that failure, claiming that the operation was a total success. That effort continued for weeks. As late as September 12, Hezbollah-linked Al-Mayadeen quoted direct information from “trusted European security sources” alleging that the attack killed twenty-two Israeli officers and intelligence personnel and wounded seventy-five others.

This propaganda could reassure Hezbollah’s base that the group was still capable of matching Israel militarily. But Hezbollah’s leadership knew its propaganda would not be enough to deter the Israelis—who knew Hezbollah’s attack had failed—from unilaterally redrawing the rules of engagement.

So, Hezbollah needed to reassert its red lines. Clandestinely killing a significant Israeli figure would be the most effective way to do so. It would settle the score for Shukr and lend Hezbollah enough cover to deny Israel justification to launch a major campaign in Lebanon.

According to the Shin Bet, Hezbollah planned to assassinate a significant former Israeli defense official by remotely detonating an explosive device inside Israel from Lebanon. Former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi was reportedly the organization’s intended target. Notably, Hezbollah made a similar attempt last year on Moshe Yaalon, also a former IDF chief of staff and defense minister.

The connection between Hezbollah’s attempt on Kochavi and the beeper operation is too uncanny to dismiss as a coincidence. The Shin Bet likely discovered Hezbollah’s explosive device weeks before the agency’s announcement on September 17. But only when the Israeli cabinet reportedly approved the beeper operation was the Shin Bet cleared to disclose that it had foiled Hezbollah’s assassination plot. Then, hours later, Israel launched its own cross-border detonation mirror attack. It was almost as if the Israelis were saying to Hezbollah, “whatever you try to do, we can do better.”

The timing of this week’s events also coincides with a noticeable shift in Israel’s posture vis-à-vis Lebanon and Hezbollah. Last week, on September 10, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant briefed Israeli troops operating in the Gaza Strip, telling them to prepare for the “weight of fighting” to shift to the northern border.

Next, the Israeli government and opposition officials began telling US interlocutors that their patience had run out with diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving Hezbollah’s threat to northern Israel. Then, due to rising tensions with Hezbollah, Israel delayed a cabinet reshuffle that would have seen Galant’s ouster. The government subsequently updated its war aims to include the return of displaced Israeli citizens to their homes in the north and authorized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Galant to undertake “defensive and offensive” measures against Hezbollah.

Israel also reportedly moved thousands of commandos, paratroopers, and other units from Gaza to the north as the twin attacks unfolded in Lebanon this week. With the explosions continuing in Lebanon—and the Israelis declining to take responsibility—Galant declared that Israel was “entering a new phase of the war” in the north. Meanwhile, Netanyahu released a short, cryptic video reiterating the goal of returning the north’s residents to their homes.

That goal, however, can only be accomplished through Israeli military action that would encompass south Lebanon at minimum. Both French and US diplomatic solutions simply fail to offer a long-term solution to the threat Hezbollah poses to Israel, particularly to the residents of the north. Paris and Washington only propose to distance the group a mere handful of kilometers from the Lebanon-Israel frontier—keeping northern Israel within range of the overwhelming bulk of Hezbollah’s arsenal—and offer no credible mechanism to prevent Hezbollah’s militants from returning to the evacuated area.

The Lebanese government and Lebanese Armed Forces, upon whom the onus of enforcing the proposed arrangement would fall, are both incapable and unwilling to act against Hezbollah—which constitutes an integral component of Lebanese politics and society. In a country where all decisions are made by sectarian consensus and where Hezbollah is the most sizable representative of the Shias—likely Lebanon’s largest single demographic—any restraining mechanism on Hezbollah would require the group’s approval. Hezbollah is unlikely to approve any arrangement that would see it restrained, let alone distanced from the Israeli border or disarmed. Conversely, acting against Hezbollah without its permission would risk igniting an unwinnable civil war in Lebanon, considering the group’s massive arsenal, public support, and ability to draw upon its Iran-backed Axis of Resistance allies for help.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon also won’t solve the problem. The peacekeeping force does not possess the authority necessary to credibly curb Hezbollah. Nor is it likely to receive such authorization from its host nation, which would lead to friction between Beirut and Hezbollah and the troop-contributing countries, which have no interest in their forces clashing with the group.

These diplomatic solutions, therefore, make Hezbollah’s return to the Blue Line—the de facto boundary between Israel and Lebanon marking the 2000 Israeli withdrawal—all but inevitable. Many of the 60,000–80,000 displaced Israeli civilians are unlikely to return to their homes, where they would live in the ominous shadow of Hezbollah—whose presence became all the more threatening after October 7, 2023, and the Shia organization’s plans for a similar attack.

With neither Lebanon nor the international community able to offer a satisfactory solution, Israel’s legitimacy to address the Hezbollah threat is growing. But while Israel can certainly argue that Hezbollah has given it sufficient legal justification to launch a major military maneuver inside Lebanon, as far as the international community and particularly the United States is concerned, Hezbollah has yet to engage in sufficient provocation to justify such a move. Yet, after igniting the fight with Israel, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis, and continuously bombarding the north for eleven months, it’s unclear what degree of provocation would suffice.

Against this backdrop, the back-to-back pager and walkie-talkie attacks can signal one of three things. The least likely is Israeli exasperation with trying to convince an inconvincible international community of the need for broad military action against Hezbollah—in which case, the attacks this week were a softening blow against Hezbollah meant to severely disrupt the group’s communications and put thousands of its fighters out of commission, denting its battle readiness. Alternatively, the Israelis may be trying to secure sufficient provocation by drawing Hezbollah into firing the first shots of a full conflict. Most likely, however, the Israelis were trying to cause Hezbollah sufficient pain to induce the organization into halting its attacks on the north even absent a ceasefire in Gaza.

Hezbollah has been engaged in a balancing act between two opposing goals since October 8, 2023. On one hand, the group doesn’t currently want a full war with Israel—not least because it doesn’t want to deal with the blowback of compounding Lebanon’s financial misery, political stagnation, and loss of foreign financial backers with a destructive conflict. On the other hand, the massive attack Hamas launched from Gaza required Hezbollah to enter the fight alongside its ally. Israel increases the tension between these two goals with every significant action it takes against Hezbollah.

Thus, this week’s dual communications device attacks pushed Hezbollah into a corner. The attacks killed at least thirty-seven of the group’s members, wounded thousands more, and demonstrated the extent to which Israel has penetrated Hezbollah’s organizational apparatus. Worse yet for Hezbollah, this all unfolded on the heels of the intelligence coup that led to Shukr’s assassination and after eleven months of Israel successfully identifying and assassinating Radwan Force commanders. Compounding matters are the humiliation inflicted upon Hezbollah by Israeli successes and the corollary damage to Hezbollah’s image.

Hezbollah will, therefore, have no choice but to retaliate—but the group is unlikely to declare a full war given its constraints. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s speech in the aftermath of the attack was an exercise in damage control rather than a declaration of war. Nonetheless, Hezbollah’s chosen retaliation will need to preserve its image of invincibility for its base and deter future similar action by Israel, while remaining below the threshold that would justify a broader Israeli campaign. For Hezbollah, Israeli actions are making this an increasingly unbearable balancing act.

David Daoud is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), focusing on Hezbollah, Israel, and Lebanon issues. Follow him on X: @DavidADaoud.

Natalie Ecanow is a research analyst at FDD. Follow her on X: @NatalieEcanow.

Further reading

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Image: Mourners carry the coffins of Hezbollah members Fadel Abbas Bazzi and Ahmad Ali Hassan, after hand-held radios and pagers used by armed group Hezbollah detonated across Lebanon, during their funeral in Ghobeiry, Beirut southern suburbs, Lebanon September 19, 2024. REUTERS/Emilie Madi