Why did Israel choose 3.30pm on a weekday to detonate its explosive pagers?

It was audacious in its conception and brilliant in its execution. Thousands of pagers distributed to Hezbollah operatives had been intercepted and modified so that small amounts of explosives detonated in individuals’ hands, pockets or locations nearby. The damage inflicted was on an unprecedented scale. The impact of thousands of small tactical devices achieved a strategic effect.

Lebanon’s health ministry said 20 people were killed and 450 injured in Wednesday’s blasts. Tuesday’s explosions killed 12 people, including two children, and injured nearly 3000, Lebanese Health Minister, Firass Abiad, said on Wednesday.

Hezbollah fighters carry the coffin of a person killed by an exploding pager in Beirut, Lebanon.Credit: AP

There are numerous unanswered questions about what the operation means. One thing is clear: it is a disaster at every level for Hezbollah. Six months ago, its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, urged members to bury their mobile devices “for the sake of security”. Now their use of the more basic – and supposedly safer – alternative communications devices has caused untold damage to the organisation, both physically and reputationally.

Israel’s identification and interdiction of the Hezbollah supply chain – allowing it to seed the pagers and walkie-talkies with the explosive – is an intelligence coup for Israel and yet another intelligence failure by Hezbollah. Israel’s July killing of senior Hezbollah military official Fuad Shukr in the Dahiya district, Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s south, showed that its senior officials were vulnerable. This attack exposes the vulnerability of hundreds of much lower-level operators.

Perhaps the biggest unanswered questions regarding the operation, though, relate to its strategic intent and timing. Why did Israel choose to detonate the devices at approximately 3.30pm on a weekday?

After compromising so many of the devices and then allowing Hezbollah’s supply chain to distribute them among hundreds, if not thousands, of its members, Israel had the luxury of waiting for exactly the right moment to detonate them. Once its capability was unmasked, Israel had to assume any other bulk electronic shipments it had compromised would be discovered, hence today’s reports of other hand-held devices exploding.

Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated across Lebanon’s south and in Beirut’s southern suburbs.Credit: AP

A strong argument can be mounted that the Israelis planned this attack as a cleverly devised preliminary operation designed to disrupt their enemy as they launched a ground incursion into Lebanon. The confusion sown into Hezbollah’s ranks, the casualties caused to the organisation, and the disarray its command structure has been thrown into as a result of these blasts has significantly degraded Hezbollah’s ability to co-ordinate a coherent defence in the early stages of an Israeli ground operation. There is no indication that Israel is likely to launch such an attack, just that this pager attack, and the follow-up attack on walkie-talkies, would have been designed as part of that ground campaign.

Perhaps the same intelligence capabilities that allowed Israel to mount this operation in the first place also alerted them to the fact it had been compromised, or that Hezbollah was suspicious enough that compromise was imminent. Then, rather than being a supporting operation, the pager attack was instituted as a standalone operation.

There was really little downside – as jarring and effective as the attacks have been in isolation, they could have potentially been devastating as part of a concerted air-and-ground campaign against Hezbollah defences, and atoned for Israel’s poorly planned and executed month-long war against the group in 2006.

Another feature of the attack was the scattergun approach to targeting. Israel had no control over where the pagers went or to whom they were issued, even if they may have had a general sense of some of the networks. Hence we see reports of individuals being killed or injured in various parts of Lebanon and into Syria, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, the son of a Hezbollah MP, and hundreds of low-level members and operatives.

This video grab shows a walkie-talkie that exploded inside a house in Baalbek, east Lebanon.Credit: AP

The sheer randomness of victims will have had its own psychological effect – being killed in an Israeli strike on the border is one thing, having a Hezbollah-issued device blowing up at your home or in a market is quite another. And Israel will add to its understanding of Hezbollah’s operational networks if information can be gathered about the people injured in the blasts and their locations when injured.

Groups such as Human Rights Watch have said this scattergun approach and use of pagers breaches customary international humanitarian law. Israel will argue that the shipment was to be used by a listed terrorist organisation in pursuit of its military aims, and that the small amount of explosives used in the attacks showed they were targeted at the likely user of the device. Regardless, the legality of such an attack will be of little interest to Israel and Hezbollah, and mainly of academic interest.

It is, of course, another blow to Hezbollah’s reputation as a highly disciplined organisation with tight operational security. The attack also further degrades their personnel structure, having suffered hundreds of dead already in the nearly year-long attritional campaign on the Israel-Lebanon border.

Hezbollah will recover though, and adopt workarounds for their internal communications that will address the shortcomings revealed by Israel’s devastating attack. And its counter-intelligence department will no doubt be working overtime to understand how the communications supply chain was compromised so effectively, as well as trying to identify other similarly vulnerable aspects of its logistics capabilities.

Despite the astounding success of this well-planned and executed intelligence operation, it will do little to shift the conflict on Israel’s northern border. The Shi’a faith’s foundational narrative from AD 680 is based on Imam Hussein’s defence to the death against the overwhelming forces sent by the oppressor Yazid, and it is a strong ideological glue that binds Hezbollah’s fighters to the cause. They will continue to fight Israel as long as they are directed to do so.

As a consequence, the tens of thousands of Israelis and Lebanese displaced from their homes near the border have no prospect of returning any time soon. Regardless of how spectacular Israel’s tactical intelligence successes are, the only thing that will quieten the Hezbollah-Israel conflict is a ceasefire in Gaza.

Rodger Shanahan is a Middle East analyst and author of Clans, Parties and Clerics: The Shi’a of Lebanon.

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