Hezbollah’s exploding pagers are just the start

00:00 07:11

Paul Wood has narrated this article for you to listen to.

Israel’s security cabinet met in a bunker in the ministry of defence in Tel Aviv on Monday night. The main item on the agenda was Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia whose missiles and rockets have forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the north. The meeting lasted into the early hours of Tuesday. At 2.26 a.m., the Prime Minister’s office issued a statement saying Israel’s war aims had been ‘updated’ – no longer just destroying Hamas in the south, but also the safe return home of everyone in the north. ‘Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.’ This seemed like a bland restatement of existing policy and didn’t excite much interest. But at 3.30 p.m. that same day, all over Lebanon thousands of pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah buzzed with the same message at exactly the same moment – and then exploded. 

Israeli journalists were spun by some officials that this was a carefully calibrated step to restore deterrence on the northern border: this wasn’t the first move in an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah doesn’t see it that way. Its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, reportedly issued an order for a general mobilisation. His organisation was in chaos, and humiliated; the message from the Israelis: we can get you anywhere. A Hezbollah MP, Ali Ammar, had a son ‘martyred’ in the pager explosions. He told Lebanese television: ‘War has two kinds of days, one day for us, one for the enemy… let the Israeli enemy know that no matter their deceit and trickery, we will have our day.’

It’s possible Israel’s new policy – ‘enough is enough’ – was driven by technical necessity.