Israel’s military said Thursday it carried out strikes against seven Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon, while also announcing the arrest of an Israeli citizen suspected of involvement in an Iran-backed plot to kill Israeli officials.
Israeli authorities said in a statement the person arrested was a businessman with connections in Turkey who attended at least two meetings in Iran and that potential targets of the plot included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The arrest took place last month, the statement said.
In addition to the Israeli strikes Thursday, the military also reported several drones crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory.
The latest cross-border attacks followed explosions of walkie-talkies and pagers used by Hezbollah in Lebanon that killed at least 32 people and wounded more than 3,000 others on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Hezbollah blamed the attacks on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
Gallant said Thursday he spoke by telephone with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about the situation in the region, including “Israel’s defense against Hezbollah threats.”
The Pentagon said Austin reiterated “unwavering U.S. support for Israel in the face of threats” from Iran, Hezbollah and other Iranian partners in the region.
“The secretary emphasized the U.S. commitment to deterring regional adversaries and efforts to deescalate tensions across the region,” a Pentagon spokesperson said.
Device explosions
The pager and walkie-talkie attacks followed Israel’s announcement that it was broadening of its goals in the war against Hamas militants in Gaza to include the securing of northern Israel from Hezbollah rocket attacks.
But some former intelligence officials argue the detonation of Hezbollah pagers, two-way radios and other devices may be part of an Israeli effort to achieve its goals without having to fight.
“What Israel is trying to do is take this far enough so they can deter Hezbollah from launching 50-60 rocket attacks a day … without risking a wider war,” said Daniel Hoffman, a retired U.S. clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the CIA.
Hoffman told VOA the suspected Israeli operation could also serve to weaken Hezbollah’s standing in Lebanon.
“It seeks to drive a wedge between regular folks and Hezbollah,” he said. “The message is, ‘You don’t want to be around them [Hezbollah].’”
And Hoffman said, given Israel’s intelligence capabilities, it is not impossible that it could target more Hezbollah devices in the future.
Other former intelligence officials have suggested that the operation to blow up pagers and other communication devices also gives Israel an advantage should tensions with Hezbollah escalate.
Notably, they said, the explosions have at least debilitated Hezbollah’s ability to communicate in a crisis while at the same time removing key militants from the battlefield.
Hezbollah began using the pagers, in particular, after the group’s leader ordered members to stop using cellphones amid concerns that Israeli intelligence could intercept and track their communications.
Dr. Tania Baban, a physician in Lebanon working for the U.S.-based medical charity MedGlobal, told VOA that her group performed more than 460 surgeries related to the pager blasts on Tuesday, including finger and hand amputations.
She said people carrying the pagers heard them beep, supposedly with messages from Hezbollah leaders, and were reading the messages when the devices exploded. Because they held them close to their faces to read, they sustained hand, eye, neck and facial injuries, while others suffered abdominal and other injuries if they still had the pagers attached to their waistline.
“Now this comes after obviously a stressful period of 11 months of Lebanon’s southern border going into war with northern Israel,” Baban said. “So, there has always been the threat of the possibility of an escalation nationwide.”
Security experts in the Mideast and the United States told U.S. media outlets they believe that somehow Israeli agents intercepted the shipment of the pagers to add the explosives to the devices before they arrived in Lebanon and were handed out by Hezbollah.
Hsu Ching-Kuang, founder of Taiwan-based manufacturer Gold Apollo, told reporters Wednesday his company did not manufacture the pagers, even though its corporate markings were on them when the remains of the exploded devices were examined Tuesday.
He said Gold Apollo had authorized its brand to be used on devices produced and sold by a company called BAC in the Hungarian capital of Budapest.
Some information for this report was provided by from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
