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How Israel’s pager fooled Hezbollah in Lebanon, new details emerge
Israel-Hezbollah war: Agents designed a battery that concealed a small, powerful plastic explosive and a new detonator that was invisible to X-ray detection.
The batteries in the weaponised pagers that arrived in Lebanon at the start of the year were part of an Israeli plan to weaken Hezbollah, featuring misleading elements along with one major weakness.
The agents who created the pagers designed a battery that hid a small but powerful charge of plastic explosive and a new detonator that could not be seen by X-ray.
The information was shared with Reuters by an unnamed source who reportedly has first-hand knowledge of the pagers and teardown photos of the battery pack.
To hide the main problem, an unconvincing story for the bulky new product, they (Israel) made fake online stores, pages, and posts to fool Hezbollah’s checks, Reuters reported.
The secret design of the pager bomb and the battery’s carefully planned backstory showed a long-running operation that has caused serious damage to Israel’s Iran-backed enemy in Lebanon and brought the Middle East closer to regional conflict.
How explosives were hidden inside pagers?
A thin sheet of six grams of PETN plastic explosive was placed between two battery cells, with a flammable strip as a detonator.
The assembly enclosed in a black plastic sleeve and metal casing, didn't use a standard detonator, making it undetectable by X-ray. When Hezbollah received the pagers in February, they scanned them but found nothing suspicious.
The report added that experts believe the device was designed to spark the detonator and trigger an explosion, though the battery pack had reduced power due to the space taken up by the explosives.
Though Hezbollah noticed the batteries in the pagers were draining faster than usual, this did not cause major concern and the group continued to distribute the devices just hours before the attack.
However, on September 17, thousands of pagers exploded simultaneously in Hezbollah strongholds, mostly after beeping to signal an incoming message.
Many suffered eye injuries, lost fingers or had severe abdominal wounds, showing how close they were to the explosions. In total, 39 people were killed and over 3,400 injured with a second attack the next day involving weaponised walkie-talkies.
What was the weak link?
From the outside, the pager’s power source looked like a regular lithium-ion battery pack used in many consumer electronics. However, the battery labelled LI-BT783 did not exist in the market, just like the pager itself.
To address this, Israeli agents created a completely fake backstory for the product.
Hezbollah has strict procurement checks, so the agents had to make sure that their fabricated product would pass inspection. A former Israeli intelligence officer who was not involved in the operation told Reuters that it's crucial for something to be found during such checks because finding nothing would raise suspicion.
Creating these false backstories, or “legends,” is a well-established tactic in spy operations, the officer added.
To fool Hezbollah, Israeli agents marketed the custom-built pager model, AR-924, under the name of a legitimate Taiwanese brand, Gold Apollo.
With inputs from Reuters
