The head of Israel's intelligence service Mossad said on Tuesday that Israel's late 2024 attack on Hezbollah using pagers marked a "turning point" in the fight against the Lebanese Shiite movement.
"This operation marked a turning point in the north (of Israel), during which we changed the situation in relation to our enemies," David Barnea stressed during a seminar in Tel Aviv.
"A direct link can be established between the paging operation, the elimination of (Hassan) Nasrallah and the ceasefire agreement," he stressed, referring to the powerful leader of the armed Islamist movement killed in an Israeli strike.
For Barnea, Hezbollah "has suffered a devastating blow that has broken the spirit of the organization."
On September 17 and 18, an Israeli operation detonated hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members in the southern suburbs of Beirut and across southern and eastern Lebanon.
According to Lebanese authorities, the attack left 39 dead and thousands injured.
On September 27, Hassan Nasrallah was killed in a massive Israeli bombing raid in southern Beirut. This operation was quickly followed by an Israeli ground offensive against Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon.
After two months of open warfare, Israel and Hezbollah have reached a ceasefire agreement, ending more than a year of cross-border clashes.
Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel following the outbreak of war on October 7, 2023, between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, with the Iran-backed Lebanese movement saying it was doing so in support of the Palestinians.
Israel, however, continues to maintain its presence at five strategic points along the border on the Lebanese side.
In a rare revelation of Mossad tactics, Barnea provided new details about the pager operation.
"We designed an unconventional method of attack by detonating a device that Hezbollah operatives always carried with them," he explained.
"When the operation was finally carried out, ten times as many pagers were set off," he added, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had personally approved the operation.
For Barnea, "deception in war has proven more powerful than brute force."
In early February, Netanyahu gave US President Donald Trump a gold pager as a memento of the operation.
No comments:
Post a Comment