Men from the most effective military force in Lebanon bleeding on the street and sprawled out in hospital beds, wounded not on the battlefield, but by devices carried in their pockets and worn on their belts.
These images of carnage — the result of what Lebanese, American and other officials have called an Israeli operation to remotely detonate hundreds of pagers carried by Hezbollah fighters — are a deep humiliation for the group, puncturing its aura as one of the region’s most sophisticated anti-Israel forces.
“This operation is basically Hezbollah’s Oct. 7,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, comparing the group’s security failures to those that allowed its ally Hamas to strike Israel last year, starting the war in Gaza. “It is a huge slap.”
Israel has not confirmed or denied any involvement in the operation, which the Lebanese authorities say killed at least 11 people and injured more than 2,700. While one young girl was among the dead, many of those targeted appeared to be connected to Hezbollah, their injuries adding physical blows to the psychological one.
“It is a serious attack,” Mr. Hage Ali said, adding that during 11 months of aerial attacks across the Lebanon-Israel border, Hezbollah had lost many leaders and cadres, some in targeted assassinations.
“And now this blow cuts through the rank and file of the organization,” he said. “It is a kind of sword stabbed deep into the organization’s body, and it will take it time to heal from that.”
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate, but its leaders have otherwise given no indication of how this attack could change its approach to the fighting with Israel or its broader conflict with the Jewish state.
Hezbollah was formed in the 1980s, with Iranian help, to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000. In the years since, it has grown into Lebanon’s most effective political party and fighting force, and expanded its operations into Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East.
It lost many members in its last major war with Israel, in 2006, but emerged stronger in the following years, building a vast arsenal that is believed to include more than 100,000 rockets and other sophisticated weapons like precision-guided missiles that can hit sensitive sites inside Israel.
There is nothing in Hezbollah’s history or ideology that suggests that Tuesday’s attack will cause it to change course or seek an accommodation with Israel. But experts on the group said it is stuck between feeling the need to respond and wanting to avoid an all-out war with Israel that could be catastrophic for both sides.
Complicating its decision is that Hezbollah has linked its cross-border strikes on Israel to the war in Gaza, leading officials in Washington and elsewhere to hope that a cease-fire there between Israel and Hamas would bring quiet to the Lebanese border as well. Tuesday’s attack could change that calculation.
“Hezbollah is in a trap of its own making,” said Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “Having tied their confrontation with Israel to the ongoing war on Gaza limits their options to de-escalate. This attack makes it even harder for them to do so.”
Inside Lebanon, it remains unclear how the shock of Tuesday’s blasts will affect Hezbollah’s own fiercely loyal community, Ms. Slim said.
“This will also add to fatigue and weariness already developing inside Hezbollah’s constituency,” she said. “On the other hand, it might increase demands inside the constituency for Hezbollah to strike back hard.”
The post Pager Attacks Puncture Hezbollah’s Aura as Powerful Anti-Israel Force appeared first on New York Times.
