‘Great operation’ behind Trump’s golden pager gift from Netanyahu
By Lilia Sebouai and Jotam Confino
Benjamin Netanyahu gave Donald Trump a golden pager in a symbolic reference to the Israeli covert operation that turned Hezbollah devices into lethal explosives in an attack last year.
The text on the pager, placed in the middle of a dissected tree trunk, reads: “Press with both hands.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump in the White House on Tuesday.Credit: Bloomberg
A small placard on the bottom of the trophy-like gift, says: “To President Donald J. Trump, our greatest friend and greatest ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
A source familiar with the gift told the London Telegraph that Trump replied on receiving it: “That was a great operation.”
The gift from Netanyahu to Trump.
Trump then gave the Israeli prime minister a photo of the two men from the latter’s US visit, inscribed: “To Bibi, a great leader.”
The US president used the meeting at the White House to announce his ambitions to resettle Palestinians from Gaza and take the Gaza Strip into US ownership.
The synchronised detonation of thousands of low-tech electronic pagers on September 18 killed at least 12 people, including two children and two healthcare workers, and injured more than 3000 people across Lebanon and Syria.
Thousands of Taiwan-built Gold Apollo pagers exploded across Hezbollah strongholds when their owners responded to a text saying they had received an encrypted message by attempting to decode it.
The sophisticated ambush, swiftly attributed to Israel, was followed by another attack in which hundreds of Hezbollah walkie-talkies, laced with a highly explosive compound known as PETN, simultaneously exploded the following day.
It was reported that up to three grams of explosives hidden in the pagers went undetected by Hezbollah for months.
Human Rights Watch warned that the attacks could be a violation of international humanitarian law through the use of pagers as booby-traps that could be “associated with normal civilian daily use”.
Lama Fakih, Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa director, said: “The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate.
“And as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction.”
The Telegraph, London
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.