Israel Hezbollah all-out war closest since October after massive pager attack

Israel has not claimed the explosion of pagers, but the incident brings them to the brink of full-scale confrontation

Relatives mourn Fatima Abdallah, a 10-year-old girl killed after hundreds of paging devices exploded in a deadly wave across Lebanon on Tuesday. AFP

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Full-scale war between Israel and militant group Hezbollah, who have been trading fire since October 8, has never been closer after a massive asymmetric attack struck thousands of the group's members across Lebanon.

The attack, widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, despite it not claiming so, simultaneously exploded pagers belonging to members of the organisation, killing 12, including two children, and injuring almost 3,000, many of them gravely, overwhelming health care facilities and striking terror across Lebanon.

Since the attack, Israel has moved a new division, between 10,000 to 20,000 troops that include elite paratroopers and commandos, to its northern border, and security officials huddled late into the night as tensions with its well-trained and highly equipped northern enemy soared.

Orna Mizrahi, a former senior Israeli security official, said the incident would be "the stamp for the decision to make the north Israel’s main front, not the south … I think we are closer to full-scale war".

"Hezbollah cannot contain such a dramatic action. They will want to retaliate and try to do it with some sort of very unusual action … I suppose it will take time to do that. They have to learn what’s going on … It’s a dramatic blow," she added.

"We learn from this event that Israel is no longer deterred from the prospect of a full-scale war. If there was some kind of a political solution on the horizon then this wouldn’t have happened. But in Israel, there is an understanding that a full-scale war is very close."

Almost one year into the Gaza war, Israeli officials have been steadily hinting in recent weeks that the country is shifting focus to its northern front, where Hezbollah is a far deadlier adversary than Gaza-based Hamas, and where the potential for an expanded campaign to trigger a wider regional war is greater. Perhaps even directly involving Israel's archenemy, Iran.

Ms Mizrahi said the pager attack could "rush" Iran's promise to respond to the assassination of former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

It remains unclear whether Tuesday's attack was part of an Israeli pre-emptive opening salvo in a full-scale war. Ms Mizrahi believes it was not, saying: "The main reason is the fact Israel’s hasn’t taken any responsibility for the action. But the possibility is there on the Israeli side because there is a lot of pressure on the Israeli government [to attack Hezbollah]."

Tensions were already high before the attack.

Reports in Israeli media suggested Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about to replace his defence minister with a candidate more hawkish towards Hezbollah.

For Lebanese military expert Walid Zaytouni, the "escalatory statements so far by the Israelis are within the framework of military intimidation because they will lose any ground invasion".

"They went for a security operation so that the response would be a security act," he added.

Just hours before the attack, Israel's internal security agency Shin Bet said it thwarted an imminent Hezbollah assassination against a former senior Israeli security official using an explosive device. The network who attempted was responsible for a bombing in Tel Aviv last year, the agency added.

Tal Hagin, a leading open-source intelligence analyst, suggested that following the intelligence failures over the October 7 attacks, the explosive pagers had “put Mossad on the map again”.

Former Israeli intelligence official Avi Melamed, who described the explosions as “taking out Hezbollah’s spine in seconds, said Tuesday’s attack dealt a “very significant blow” to the group on all levels.

“If there’s going to be an all-out war, conditions for Hezbollah are clearly less favourable than they were on September 16," he told The National.

Iran and Hezbollah are, more and more, finding themselves in the dilemma of either sustaining accumulative damage and eroding their image of deterrence, or launching an attack and risking all-out war, thus risking Hezbollah and Iran.

"The Hezbollah of September 16 is not the same as Hezbollah of September 17," said Mr Melamed.