How Israel’s plan to booby-trap Hezbollah pagers took 9 years: Report

Thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, exploded on September 17 and 18, killing over 30 and injuring thousands. New details have emerged revealing that this was part of a long-coordinated operation by Israel spanning years. For nearly a decade, Israel discreetly booby-trapped the devices, using them for eavesdropping while maintaining the capability to remotely detonate them.
According to a Washington Post report, the first phase of the plan was initiated by Israeli spy agency Mossad in 2015, with the devices being covertly introduced into Lebanon.
“For nine years, the Israelis contented themselves with eavesdropping on Hezbollah, while reserving the option to turn the walkie-talkies into bombs in a future crisis. But then came a new opportunity and a glitzy new product: a small pager equipped with a powerful explosive,” The Post reported, citing officials.
The plan for the pager explosion operation emerged in 2022, more than a year before Hamas’s October 7 attack, the report further said. The initial sale pitches of the Apollo AR924 pagers to Hezbollah were also sent two years ago.
The slightly bulky pagers and oversized battery that could offer long operational days were convenient for the Israeli experts to place the explosives. The “pagers’ most sinister feature” was a two-step de-encryption procedure that required the user’s hands.
“That ensured most users would be holding the pager with both hands,” when Mossad triggered the devices remotely on September 17, The Post reports.
“You had to push two buttons to read the message”, and in the ensuing explosion, the users would almost certainly “wound both their hands,” and thus “would be incapable to fight,” an official was quoted as saying.
Mossad, which had spent years trying to penetrate Hezbollah through electronic monitoring and human informants, learned that one of the group’s key concerns was having a surveillance-free communication method that Israel could not track. Mossad explored this and the Apollo pagers were presented to the militant group as a device with zero risk of surveillance.
The selection of the Taiwanese company was also crucial, as Hezbollah leaders were wary of devices from countries with ties to Israel. The Taiwanese Apollo pagers, a well-recognized trademark and product line with worldwide distribution, had no apparent connections to Israeli or Jewish interests, the report further stated.
In 2023, the sales pitch came from a marketing official trusted by Hezbollah with ties to Apollo, “a woman whose identity and nationality officials declined to reveal”. She was a former Middle East sales representative for the Taiwanese firm and a licensee of the Apollo pagers through her company.
However, the marketing official had no idea of the Israeli operation and was unaware that the pagers were physically assembled in Israel under Mossad oversight, an official told The Post.
The pager and walkie-talkie explosion marked a significant escalation in the prolonged conflict between Israel and its strongest regional adversary, Hezbollah, plunging the Middle East into a war-like situation.