How can anyone feel safe in Lebanon after the deadly pager attacks?

Thousands in Lebanon were injured and at least 32 people were killed this week in a double attack believed to have been conducted by Israel. On Tuesday, thousands of pagers in the possession of Hezbollah members simultaneously detonated across the country, causing serious injuries. At least two children were killed.
What nobody expected is that it would happen again, the very next day. A second wave of explosions went off at the same time of day – in this case walkie-talkies and other electronic devices were detonated.
Hezbollah blamed Israel for the attacks, but Israel has not publicly claimed them yet. It wouldn’t be the first time Israel has conducted a deadly operation on Lebanese soil. In January it was accused of killing Hamas’s Saleh Al-Arouri in a drone strike on Beirut. In July, it assassinated Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr.
This attack is the latest in a series of escalations of the war in Gaza despite repeated warnings by the international community to contain the fighting before it gets out of hand. But how can a large-scale operation of this nature not make a bad situation worse?
In this episode of Beyond the Headlines, host Nada AlTaher speaks to The National’s Beirut correspondent Nada Homsi, who has been reporting on the story on the ground, and discusses the implications of this attack for the future of Lebanon and the region.
Below is the full transcript of this episode:
Nada AlTaher: In a viral video taken in a supermarket in Beirut’s Dahieh neighborhood, we hear a loud bang. A man shopping in the produce section falls to the ground, screaming in agony. A pager in his possession has suddenly exploded. Shoppers are visibly panicked and scramble away.
Children take cover in their mother’s arms. The same state of pandemonium happens thousands of times across Lebanon, all in the same instant. The intended targets are Hezbollah members, who use pagers to communicate without being detected by Israeli intelligence.
By the next day, hospitals are overflowing, after 2,800 people are injured and 12 people are killed, including two children.
What nobody expected is that it would happen again the very next day. A second wave of explosions went off simultaneously across the country, this time detonating walkie-talkies and other electronic devices. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least 20 people were killed and 450 injured.
Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the attacks, but Israel has not publicly claimed them yet. It wouldn’t be the first time Israel conducted a deadly operation on Lebanese soil. In January, it was accused of killing Hamas’s Saleh Al Arouri in a drone strike on Beirut. In July, it assassinated Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr.
This attack may be the latest in a series of escalations in the war in Gaza, despite repeated, albeit mild, warnings from the international community to contain the fighting before it gets out of hand. But how can such a large-scale attack not make a bad situation even worse? This is Beyond the Headlines and I’m your host Nada AlTaher.
This week, we try to make sense of the security breach that caused the pager explosions and the implications this operation will have on the future of Lebanon and the region.
For Lebanon’s population, the spillover of Gaza’s war has compounded their struggles as they grapple with a crumbling economy and a never-ending cycle of violence. This latest incident has unlocked a new vulnerability, making virtually no public space safe for anyone. The National’s correspondent in Beirut, Nada Homsi, has been reporting on the story.
Nada, can you give us a snapshot of what it’s like in Lebanon in the aftermath of the pager and walkie-talkie explosions? What was the reaction of the general public?
Nada Homsi: The reaction, first of all, was utter shock. I mean, people didn’t really know what was happening and didn’t believe what was happening, unless it happened right in front of them.
For those who saw it, it was absolutely shocking. I mean, who can believe they’ve seen pagers explode and maim or kill those around them. So there’s a massive sense that this attack was not just on Hezbollah, but the entire nation.
This is because, first of all, the attacks happened all over Lebanon, in Beirut, in south Lebanon, in parts of the Bekaa Valley. People saw friends, spouses and colleagues maimed and killed. They saw limbs completely separated from bodies, blood on the ground.
Imagine the sense of confusion and panic you would have if you saw a pager, a device used in the 1990s for doctors to communicate with each other, explode. It’s a completely obsolete device that’s only used by Hezbollah members, essentially to bypass Israel’s interception of communications.
No one expected the attack on the first day, certainly no one expected another on the second day. They think nothing is safe any more. If a pager or a walkie-talkie can explode, what else can? Their phones? Their laptops? Lighters?
It could be anything. People are afraid to use their devices and, at the same time, they’re completely dependent on them.
NA: Can you tell us about the situation in hospitals that were overflowing with casualties? And what was the response from the community? How else did the public respond, other than the obvious state of shock, panic and fear, in terms of solidarity and camaraderie?
NH: Everyone, basically, immediately started setting to work. Arab culture is very communal. For example, when parallel parking, usually there are people around you telling you where to go and how to turn, in order to parallel park properly.
So imagine hundreds of people trying to clear the area from the site of the attack and also ensure ambulances and paramedics reach the injured and take them to hospital. Then when you’re in the hospital, of course, there is chaos and throngs of people.
But, at the same time, everyone instantly turned into a volunteer. They were keeping the press at bay and keeping non-essential personnel at bay, in order to ensure everyone was getting the help they needed.
The Health Ministry said all medical staff should head to the hospitals. Hospitals should be ready for any kind of emergency situation. So the health sector rallied, but people rallied even before anything was said by the government.
A lot of people immediately headed to hospitals, started donating blood and were just standing by waiting to see if they were going to be needed, or if they could help.
Some hospitals had 50 to 100 people, all of them in various conditions. A lot of people were completely maimed.
The first attack injured 3,000 people. A lot of those people had missing fingers and hands, there were a lot of eye injuries. People lost their eyes. The death toll wasn’t so high in comparison to the injuries, but the injuries were incredibly detrimental.
NA: Can you tell us about how this attack stands out? We’ve seen a lot of shocking attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent months, almost certainly presumed to be carried out by Israel. What makes this one so surprising and especially provocative?
NH: What makes it so provocative is the surprise nature of the attack. No one was expecting waves of handheld electronic devices to go off. Then there was the scale, the fact it was nationwide.
Up until now, there’s been a war between Hezbollah and Israel across the border, but that’s taken the shape of more traditional attacks that include air strikes, bombings, shellings and rocket launches. Even when assassinations happen, it’s one or two people at a time. Now, it’s cadres of Hezbollah members.
The thing I have to remember is that Hezbollah is very much part and parcel of Lebanese society. I think this attack really exposed how Lebanese society, its politics, its institutions, everything from parliament, to banking, to daily life, Hezbollah has a hand in it.
In parts of Lebanon where Hezbollah is especially strong, it provides better services than the government, which is essentially paralysed. So the attack gave a sense of how embedded in daily life Hezbollah is.
They’re parents, spouses, friends, doctors, healthcare workers, students and employees. They’re the people you see passing by you every single day. They’re not all fighters holding weapons. A lot of them are off duty and a lot of the people that were injured and killed were also off duty, just living their daily lives.
But another really provocative thing about this attack is that it also exposed them. Often the identities of Hezbollah fighters. You might have a sense that a person has a political allegiance or affiliation with Hezbollah, but you don’t know whether they’re a fighter or a card-carrying member. This attack really exposed their identities to the world as well.
NA: One of the outcomes of this attack was that people were sharing on social media a lot of photos and a lot of videos, not only of the scenes and the panic, but the people. Do you think this represents a second layer of a security breach, besides the infiltration of the pagers and the walkie-talkies?
NH: Absolutely. This operation was thought through well in advance. The first aspect of it is shock and awe, maximum damage and perhaps psychologically terrifying the enemy, as Israel would perceive Hezbollah, into submission.
But the second and really large part of it is the security breach, because now Israel has videos and photos and evidence of the people holding devices meant to be used by Hezbollah. Israel has faces, names, all sorts of intelligence.
Keep in mind that everyone who goes into hospital is also recorded. That goes to the Health Ministry. I spoke to digital experts in the past and there have been many instances of hacks into government and ministry systems. So this is another layer of a security breach.
NA: Have you been able to gather any information about how Israel, or any other state or actor, might be able to conduct such a massive security breach? What do we know about the pagers and the walkie-talkies?
NH: There are several theories. The first is that explosives were planted in the pagers and walkie-talkies before they were imported to Lebanon. The second theory is that some sort of glitch was exploited by Israel to allow the lithium batteries in the pagers and walkie-talkies to overheat.
But the first theory is more prevalent. What we know so far is the pagers were branded by a Taiwanese company called Apollo Gold, but that company said it only outsourced its brand trademark to a Hungarian company called BAC Consulting. The Hungarian government says those pagers were never actually in Hungary and that BAC Consulting is something they call the trading intermediary.
The New York Times reported that BAC Consulting is an Israeli shell company, which could mean that, at some point in the supply chain, if you ascribe to the first theory, Israel’s Mossad agency could have easily filled those pagers with explosives, before they were delivered to Lebanon.
Less is known about the walkie-talkies. We know the brand and we’re working to confirm theories about the attack, because it just happened yesterday. What we know is that walkie-talkies could hold more explosives, which could also explain the higher death toll.
On the second day, 12 people were killed and 450 injured. Even though there were fewer injuries from the pager attacks, there were also fewer from the walkie-talkies potentially filled with explosives. But this attack was a lot more deadly.
NA: We’re talking to you about five hours before Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, is set to speak. We obviously don’t know what he’s going to say and whether his comments are going to be more scathing than previous ones.
We have heard a lot of promises of retaliation against previous attacks on the group on Lebanese soil. But that seems to have been largely contained, because what experts have been telling us is that nobody really wants a war, and that if someone did, we would be in a war already. But do you think these attacks change that dynamic at all?
NH: It’s really hard to say. When Fouad Shukr was assassinated the day before Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran, we were all saying, this is it, there might be war after this.
And then Hezbollah’s response was not as intense as everyone expected it to be. One thing that’s really important to keep in mind is that, the day before these attacks, Israel publicly announced that one of its main objectives in the war was to take the attention off Gaza and Hamas and look towards its north, where Hezbollah is waging the majority of the battle against Israel.
Israel’s goal is to return the residents of northern Israel to areas that have been evacuated, which to Israel would mean eradicating the threat of Hezbollah at the border. Now we have these attacks.
I think Hezbollah’s rhetoric has been consistently very strong, but then when it comes time to respond to large attacks, it’s always made a point to show restraint and just fall short of allowing an all-out war to erupt. This either has emboldened Israel to even go further in its attacks, content in the knowledge that Hezbollah will not escalate it to the point of all-out war, or Israel wants a war to happen and is goading Hezbollah into responding.
NA: That’s it for Beyond the Headlines this week. For the latest updates on this and more, visit thenationalnews.com. This episode was produced by Ban Barkawi and Arthur Eddyson. Yasmeen Altaji is our assistant producer, Doaa Farid is our editor, and I’m your host Nada AlTaher.