Daniel Byman
Foreign Policy / September 19, 2024
The stunning attacks are a setback for Hezbollah but raise risks for Israel.
The stunning Israeli operations that led to the near-simultaneous explosions of pagers belong to thousands of Hezbollah members on Tuesday and then, a day later, walkie-talkies are remarkable for their sophistication and planning. They demonstrate, once again, the extraordinary skill of Israeli intelligence. Yet for all their tactical brilliance, will these operations help Israel defeat Hezbollah?
There’s much we don’t know, both about the immediate effects of the attacks, Israel’s decision-making calculus, and the Hezbollah response. With these caveats in mind, a first look suggests that the operation is clearly a humiliation and a setback for Hezbollah and may weaken the group in the long term as well as disrupt it today. However, the Israel-Hezbollah balance remains dangerously even, and Israel cannot count on the attacks to make it safer in the long term. Escalation to a disastrous all-out war cannot be ruled out. On Thursday, Israel launched at least 50 airstrikes on southern Lebanon, according to a Lebanese report.
For now, at least, Hezbollah as an organization faces major disruptions. The operations killed at least 37 people, the vast majority of them fighters, and wounded thousands. Many of those wounded have lost hands or eyes or are otherwise less able to fight—a remarkably effective operation against an elite fighting force. The loss of so many fighters would make it harder for Hezbollah to field a military force to fight Israel. In addition, how Hezbollah fighters would communicate with commanders is unclear given that every means of electronic communication seems to be an Israeli weapon.
The operation may also make ordinary Hezbollah fighters more afraid and cautious in the future. Part of the reason that Hezbollah fighters used pagers was because the group’s leaders believed, probably correctly, that Israel had penetrated their cell phone communications. If ordinary pagers and walkie-talkies are also dangerous, how can Hezbollah safely communicate? Even when Hezbollah restores communications with new equipment, its fighters may fear that their technologies will turn against them. Such fear is its own weapon: When fighters doubt their equipment, the validity of messages from their leaders, and other day-to-day basics of military operations, they are less effective. In addition, as Eliot Cohen points out, organizations with security flaws often tear themselves apart looking for spies and make themselves dysfunctional in the name of protecting their secrets.
The attacks are also embarrassing. Hezbollah is a strong organization with deep roots in Lebanon and can survive such humiliation, but it diminishes the group’s credibility within the country. This, in turn, hurts recruitment and may make rival communities and political blocs in Lebanon more willing to stand up to the group—though given their weakness and dysfunction, this seems like a stretch.
Israel also seems to be trying to send a message to Hezbollah that it will continue to impose heavy costs on the group. Since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its attack, Israel has killed senior Hezbollah leaders and field commanders, attacked Hezbollah’s forces and infrastructure in southern Lebanon with airstrikes and artillery, and otherwise hit the group again and again. The pager and walkie-talkie attacks, while clever and unusual, are part of a broader campaign.
The effect at home is also important. The Oct. 7 attack was an intelligence failure for Israel, and restoring the services’ puissant reputations is important to reassure the Israeli population that, despite their dangerous neighbourhood, they can live their lives knowing their government can protect them. Politically, of course, the skill of the operation also bolsters support for leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who can claim credit for it—a particularly important objective for these figures given the current turbulence in Israeli politics.
Set against all this, however, are several costs and limits that Israeli leaders clearly believe are low or at least worth paying but that may turn out to be higher than they anticipate.
At the very least, the attacks makes it harder for Hezbollah to accept any peace deal independent of one linked to a Gaza cease-fire, which would remove the group’s justification for continued fight. It would be politically difficult for Hezbollah to accept a deal that reduces its presence near Israel’s border and otherwise make concessions as it is being openly humiliated. There is no way for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah or other officials to spin the latest violence as a win to save face with supporters. This may not matter to Israel. Preceding the attack, Gallant had warned that a military solution, not negotiations, is what will lead to change along its borders.
The biggest risk is that this may lead to an all-out war. As I’ve argued before, such a war would be devastating to both Israel and Lebanon and might not fundamentally change the strategic equation despite the high cost it would impose. Hezbollah has a massive rocket and missile arsenal, and it could overwhelm Israel missile and air defenses and strike civilian and infrastructure targets throughout the country. Even if Hezbollah suffered considerable losses, the group has many supporters in Lebanon and, with Iranian help, could rebuild its forces and, a few years down the road, pose just as much of a threat to Israel.
War is not inevitable. Although Nasrallah described the attacks as a “declaration of war,” he also did not promise immediate retaliation and had words of caution as well as fiery rhetoric. So far, Hezbollah has tried to keep the war limited, but where Hezbollah’s true red line for war lies is unclear. The group may also try to respond with terrorism in Europe or another part of the world, as it has in the past, as a way of responding but not doing so with military strikes, where Israel has the upper hand.
In addition, there is the question of why Israel employed this impressive capability now. One can imagine triggering it just as Israeli tanks were rolling into Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, sowing chaos at a critical moment for the group. At times, a covert capability must be used or lost—there is always a risk of discovery—but by playing an ace today, Israel does not have it in its hand for the future.
For Israeli leaders, however, such concerns seem outweighed by the tactical benefits, and in any event many of the country’s pre-Oct. 7 approaches to security no longer apply. One of the biggest is its confidence in deterrence and limited war. Fearing a repeat of a surprise catastrophe on the order of Oct. 7, Israel is willing to risk greater conflict and even all-out war, believing that this may be better than living in constant fear of a surprise attack.
Most worrisome is the possibility that Israeli leaders are not thinking about the long term at all. Israel has a long tradition of short-term political thinking in its national security decision-making, and the constant pressure on Hezbollah may foster an escalatory spiral that Israelis may eventually regret.
Daniel Byman is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service; his latest book is Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism
