Could exploding walkie talkies have ended war with Hezbollah in 2023? – exclusive

The storyline has been set since mid-September: Israel’s exploding beepers (for which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken credit) flattened Hezbollah and paved the way for the IDF to crush the Lebanese terror group over the next month, leading to a ceasefire with far more favorable terms to Jerusalem than had been expected for most of the 14-month war.

But what if there was an entirely different storyline where Israel could have done even more to Hezbollah in the opening shot and much earlier, but didn’t?

While significant elements of the set narrative are true, in the shadows the Israeli intelligence community was at times dealing with a far more complex range of scenarios, including one where the exploding walkie-talkies might have caused far more damage to Hezbollah than the beepers ever could have.

In this other scenario – in a maximum success scenario – Israel’s intelligence services use of the walkie-talkies could have killed as many as 15,000 Hezbollah fighters in one fell swoop. This could have dwarfed the around 3,500 mostly Hezbollah terrorists who were ultimately wounded by the mix of the beepers first and walkie-talkies second on September 17-18.

Some sources are saying that if the walkie-talkies had been activated on October 11, 2023, killing 15,000 Hezbollah fighters all in one fell swoop could have quickly ended the war in the North, kept Iran and the Houthis out of the war, and possibly even freaked Hamas out into cutting a more favorable deal with Israel in the South.

Walkie-talkie plans

At some later date, historians will be exposed to all of the inner transcripts and communications of the top defense and political echelons regarding the war, and a more definitive conclusion will be reached about what was or was not possible on October 11, 2023.

But with significant limits still on what The Jerusalem Post can reveal at this juncture, sources have indicated that: 1) if the walkie-talkies had been activated on October 11, 2023, they would not have had anywhere near the maximum hoped impact under the specific existing circumstances; 2) already three years earlier the walkie-talkies had been shifted from “Plan A” to “Plan B”; and 3) given the full balance of the circumstances, the use of the beepers on September 17, 2024 far exceeded the impact the walkie-talkies could have had in 2023.

The story of the mass booby-trapped electronics started with the walkie-talkies and goes back to the decade before when the booby-traps were developed.

Updates were made along the way, but the most significant update was a few years ago when it was decided to push the beeper explosion program ahead of the walkie-talkie explosion program.

The idea was that the beepers would remain more reliably with Hezbollah forces at all times, even during peacetime or during times of low-grade conflict.

In contrast, the walkie-talkies could theoretically kill more Hezbollah fighters only if all the right military circumstances occurred at the same time.

It remains arguable whether Israel should have launched a major strike on Hezbollah on October 11, 2023, as the IDF high command and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant recommended at the time – and there are two complex sides to that debate.

A successful massive strike then might have beaten Hezbollah much earlier and saved 80,000 northern residents from evacuating. But it also could have backfired and led to many more citizens and soldiers being killed than were killed when Jerusalem ordered the strike in September of this year.

Either way, the beeper explosions likely would have been the opening shot, and the walkie-talkies, which had already become Plan B some years earlier, would have been the secondary shot.

Another major issue that the Post can now shed greater light on is the circumstances of why the beeper explosions were activated on September 17.

Back on September 22, the Post already reported that conventional wisdom – that the beepers were rushed to be activated on September 17 solely because they were about to be exposed by Hezbollah – was wrong.

This wrongheaded narrative made sense with how surprised both the Israeli and Lebanese public seemed by the episode after Jerusalem had allowed Hezbollah to fire rockets on its northern front for 11 months without taking any consistent major steps to force a change beyond limited retaliations.

But the Post had learned that Israel had picked the timing carefully and not solely because of some sudden discovery by Hezbollah.

Netanyahu initiated major strike on September 12

Now, the Post can disclose that Netanyahu had already decided to initiate a major strike on Hezbollah as of September 12.

It is noteworthy that in the days leading up to the beeper explosions, both Netanyahu and Gallant made public statements about elevating the push to return northern residents to their homes to become one of the primary missions of the current war.

This came after Gallant declared Hamas’s last of 24 battalions in Rafah defeated on August 21.

In other words, for the weeks and days leading up to the deeper explosions, Israel was shifting its ground and air forces heavily toward the northern border after having focused most of them on Gaza since October 2023.

In this narrative, carefully timed exploding devices set the stage for sending Hezbollah reeling on its backheels, leading into the possibly even more significant attacks, which the IDF later admitted to.

Without beepers and cell phones to communicate, suddenly, Hezbollah Radwan special forces commander Ibrahim Aqil and around 20 of his top sub-commanders needed to meet in person to develop retaliation plans.

When they did a few days later, the IDF killed Aqil and somewhere between 13-15 other critical sub-commanders. This is not to say that Hezbollah never got close to exposing the beeper or walkie-talkie plots.

Sources have indicated that in September, and also at other earlier times, there were potential dangers of exposure to the booby-trapped devices’ plans.

Ultimately, it seems that at most, some renewed repeat concerns, but not necessarily at the level of a true crisis of exposure, of the program being exposed, which came up in mid-September, may have led to a decision to initiate the explosions and attacks a week or two earlier than they would have happened anyway.

This is not the same as the picture some have painted that the decision to stage a major attack on Hezbollah came almost accidentally after the beepers were allegedly on the verge of exposure for the first time.

Rather, as stated, Netanyahu made the decision days before any new danger of deeper exposure of the program had come up.