Listening in: Hezbollah pager attack plans were a decade in the making - report

Israel's pager attack on Hezbollah operatives had been in motion for nearly nine years, exclusive reporting from The Washington Post claimed on Saturday.

The Washington Post unveiled never-before-seen information about the pagers and walkie-talkies used in the September attacks on Hezbollah. The report suggested that the plans to bug the walkie-talkies used in the September 17 attack were put into play in Lebanon as early as 2015. 

Beepers and pagers used in the first wave of the attacks were built in Israel in 2022 and inserted into the Apollo supply line without the company’s knowledge, the report suggested. Hezbollah operatives bought 5,000 after a saleswoman convinced the group that they would be impenetrable to Israeli surveillance. 

“She was the one in touch with Hezbollah, and explained to them why the bigger pager with the larger battery was better than the original model,” an Israeli official briefed on details of the operation told The Washington Post. 

Hezbollah began distributing the pagers in February, but some were distributed as late as the day before the attack. 

Security concerns 

Some of the radios used in the second wave of the attack had been inside Lebanon for nearly a decade. The batteries of the walkie-talkies were laced with a highly explosive compound known as PETN and surveillance means, previous reporting from Reuters suggested

For nine years, Israeli intelligence used the radios to listen in on Hezbollah operations and waited to use them in case of a future emergency. With escalations heightening in the North, there were growing fears that this Trojan Horse-like trap would be discovered. 

The Washington Post suggested that senior-level Israeli security officials didn’t know about the plan until a few days before its execution. Once officials had decided to go through with the top-secret plan while knowing the risk of expanding the conflict in the North, Hezbollah officials with pagers got a message saying an encrypted message was incoming, requiring them to press two buttons and thus ensuring maximum damage.