Is Israel pressuring Hezbollah to withdraw from Lebanon’s border with pager attack?

Israel is looking to force Hezbollah to drop its demand for an end to the Gaza war as a precondition to cease border attacks, analysts say

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A police officer looks at a car in which a hand-held pager exploded in Beirut on Tuesday. Photo: AP

Published: 4:36pm, 20 Sep 2024Updated: 4:39pm, 20 Sep 2024

Israel’s suspected mass detonation this week of low-tech pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah was designed to increase pressure on the Iran-aligned group to withdraw its forces from Lebanon’s border with the Jewish-majority state, analysts say.

By allegedly triggering explosions in thousands of the devices on Tuesday and Wednesday, Israel was also looking to force Hezbollah to drop its demand for an end to the Gaza conflict as a precondition for ceasing border hostilities, made during negotiations conducted by Western and Lebanese intermediaries.

Observers say the timing of the covert Israeli operation, which according to Lebanon’s health ministry killed 32 people and wounded 3,250 others, may also indicate that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration is looking to avoid all-out war with Hezbollah.

“This operation may have been designed to send a message but not necessarily the traditional operational prep-of-the-environment operation”, which would have signified the beginning of an Israeli ground move into Lebanon, said Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer.

Instead, this may have been part of the Israeli strategy of “escalate to de-escalate”, he said.

“In other words, by delivering a devastatingly stark and brutal warning to Hezbollah that it has totally compromised its security, Israel signifies to the group that a wider war would be disastrous,” said Polymeropoulos, who is also a non-resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Centre for Strategy and Security in Washington.