A massive operation targeting Hezbollah, allegedly carried out by Israel’s spy agency, left at least 37 people dead and thousands badly injured. In an unexpected turn of events, the weapon used against the group members were thousands of regular pagers. What was the technical side of the story and what makes Hezbollah turn to these outdated handheld devices for military arrangements?
Lebanon was shattered by a simultaneous explosion of several thousand pagers used by Hezbollah members. However, the incident also affected the civilian population, including women and children, which qualifies it as one of the largest terror attacks in recent history. In spite of that, some media outlets referred to it as a successful ‘operation’ carried out by Israeli intelligence. The Israeli authorities, meanwhile, remain tight-lipped about what happened. According to Axios, though, the attack was allegedly ordered by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
The investigation has already been launched by a number of countries, and as the probe unravels, the list will keep expanding. But both the scale of the operation, which left 12 people dead and several thousand disabled (mostly visually impaired and those with maimed hands), and its technical details have somewhat cleared up.
Up to 5,000 identical AR-924 pagers manufactured by the Taiwan-based Gold Apollo went off across Lebanon from Beirut all the way to the Beqaa Valley. These are very popular models because of their affordable price, reliability and long-lasting lithium batteries. Commercials show them to be extremely water-resistant too.
As opposed to those who had their devices on them at the time of the explosion, the survivors whose pagers sat at the bedside table or elsewhere were not as unfortunate. Neither were those whose devices failed to detonate. The rest of the individuals targeted by the attack were gravely injured. Some reports claim the pagers were bleeping for 10 minutes on end, prompting the victims to grab them.
Understandably, people at Gold Apollo are now freaking out as the firm is facing potential shutdown. The manufacturer’s executives maintain the models in question were never shipped to the Middle East. Moreover, they were assembled by a European-based firm known as BAC. The company goes on to claim that a total of 260,000 AR-924 pagers were mostly delivered to the US and Australia to be used in government service and healthcare as a tried-and-true, fast method of communications. A pager can be very efficient in urgently summoning a surgeon to the OR, for example.
Worst still, it delivered a major blow to Taiwan’s entire tech industry whose exports account for 70% of the island’s economy. Not least of all, politics-wise, getting embroiled in the Middle Eastern standoff would be the last thing on the government’s mind.
According to the company representatives, they have been working with BAC for the past three years. Recently, BAC requested their permission to start assembling the pagers at a European site as a potential franchisee. But so far, nothing is known about what kind of company it is, which European country it is based out of and what facilities they intended to use. That is, if the account holds any water at all. In case it does, it may have been a front set up by Mossad years ago to get hold of the ‘Taiwan-made’ pagers. The thing is, Hezbollah has been using paging as their go-to communications system for quite a while.
Essentially, a pager is a radio designed to receive text messages. It has no mics, cameras, internet or wi-fi connection, external antennas or advanced software. In short, there is literally nothing that would allow someone to hook up to it remotely. Even the initial setup requires a good old cable to be plugged in. There is no readily available way to install any malware to it or hack into it.
Worse still, the paging system operators themselves barely know the device’s whereabouts much unlike even the dumbest of phones that are traceable to the closest cell tower. The message is relayed as follows. The outgoing signal is received by all the pagers within reach, but only the target one is capable of textually deciphering it. Albeit somewhat outdated, it offers just enough technology to protect the message from being intercepted or located, which sounds like a perfect fit for Hezbollah.
A further advantage of this system is that most pagers are one-way devices. Since Hezbollah is a rigid top-down structure where orders are being sent unidirectionally, it does not necessarily encourage two-way communication. One cannot plant explosives, no matter the amount, inside 5,000 pagers in their garage. It could only be done at the assembly line. Hence the Taiwanese manufacturer’s concerns. But why would them tamper with so many devices?
In all likelihood, Mossad planned on activating this whole paging network in the lead-up to a full-fledged hot war against Hezbollah and Lebanon, which some say is only days away. That would have wreaked havoc on the group’s management and interaction systems. Pagers are being utilised by Hezbollah as the preferred communications device for military arrangements. Every unit is assigned their position, role and mission.
When Day X rolls around, the pager-holders receive their mission order, typically as a code or a quote from the Quran. That is when thousands of seemingly ordinary folks turn into a well-disciplined army where everyone is duly positioned, fully equipped and keenly aware of the job they are supposed to do. The trouble with this line of reasoning is that the batch of pagers was not specifically ordered by Hezbollah. Reportedly, the devices were freely available to the general public. Those who planted the explosives had no way of knowing who exactly would end up owning the pager.
According to the sources in Lebanon, at the time of the attack, many pagers were being used by the Hezbollah members’ families and friends as well as other regular Lebanese civilians. As a result, the attack took a toll on those people, including children. If that was indeed the case, the operation would qualify as terrorism. In many criminal codes around the world, this would be tantamount to a premeditated plot to commit the murder of a group of people in a non-selective manner that endangered other members of the public, based on racial and religious intolerance, and carry life without parole.
Now, why would Hezbollah not order a batch of custom pagers produced by a reliable manufacturer? The answer is simple. It is not a government institution but a public organisation of sorts with limited capabilities. Had it tried to order a batch of custom-designed devices, they would have most certainly ended up with Mossad operatives as Hezbollah’s economic activities are being closely monitored.
For one, they can do it by tracking the purchases of auxiliary components. Similarly, the South American law enforcement and intelligence agencies bust cocaine labs by chasing down the large batches of ether required to convert the leaves of the coca plant into the finished product. The production of chemical weapons can be traced by the procurement of precursor elements that are often camouflaged as ingredients for beauty products. Long story short, Hezbollah had to buy whatever was available on the market.
According to Western news agencies, the batch in question was purchased several months ago. The recent activation of pagers by the Israelis was linked to the users’ suspicions raised by the seemingly unprovoked overheating of the devices.
Or perhaps someone had even dissembled their device, only to bump into a tiny container of PETN, a white crystalline powder that, once heated, starts to rapidly accelerate and explodes. The only step the Israeli agency had to take was to remotely heat up the lithium batteries by exceeding its critical capacity through an onslaught of messages. Hence the 10-minute bleeping spree.
Credit where credit is due, by pulling off that operation, Mossad partly made up for the devastating reputational losses inflicted by the 7 October 2023 security breach, which led to the Hamas incursion. Hezbollah’s top brass has now been knocked out for the time being, and it will take the group some time to recover from this major setback. The psychological side effect of the operation may be that regular Arabs will, from now on, be apprehensive of using any electronic communications devices.
The investigators’ attention will, most likely, be drawn to the mysterious ‘Europe-based BAC firm.’ The Taiwanese authorities will also be looking forward to the probe’s findings. That being said, the odds of this investigation succeeding and the actual perpetrators being identified appear slim. Lebanon does not have enough capabilities to afford a large-scale probe.
But one thing that can be said for a certainty is that the Israel–Lebanon border is fast devolving into a potential war zone. Since Mossad has the resources it takes to carry out an operation that convoluted, costly and drawn-out, chances are, the Middle Eastern crisis is only going to escalate.