You probably are familiar with the Israel/Palestine conflict, which has been ongoing since October 7th, 2023, when the Palestinian terrorist group called the Hamas attacked Israel, killing over 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians. As of September 23rd 2024, over 40,000 people have been killed by the conflict. Now, approaching almost a year since the initial attacks started, Israel has turned to their northern neighbor in Lebanon, targeting the Hezbollah group.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese organization that was created primarily to fight the Invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982. The group is made up of various Shia Muslims in Lebanon, and has been involved in Lebanese politics since the 1990’s. After Hamas attacked Israel, Hezbollah launched a series of air attacks on Israel shortly after. The group pledged they would not stop attacking until a ceasefire was reached on the Gaza strip.
In response to the Hezbollah organizations’ actions, the IDF (Israel Defense forces) have now decided to launch an attack on Lebanon. On September 17th 2024, pagers used by hundreds of Hezbollah members simultaneously exploded, killing 9 and wounding several thousand. The pagers were acquired by the organization in fear that intelligence was being leaked to the Israelis through cell phones.
A day later on September 18th, another series of explosions rocked the country of Lebanon, this time through rigged walkie-talkies. At least 20 people were killed in this attack, 16 of them being members of Hezbollah. Israel had no comment on both mass explosion incidents.
These incidents are recent, so extensive details of the situation have not yet been released. Although, for an attack like this to work, it would have to be meticulously planned well before the event. The company ICOM, a Japanese firm that manufactured the IC-V82 walkie talkie model used in this event, stated that the model was discontinued a decade ago, and could not determine if the devices were counterfeit, or shipped by ICOM.
Shortly after the explosions, the Israeli defense minister stated a “new era” of war has begun, that their center of gravity has now been shifted towards the north, focusing on Lebanon and Hezbollah. Recently, Israel has punished Lebanon with airstrikes in the south of their country. This entire situation is complex and something that has rarely happened in modern warfare. The only other situation similar to this was in World War II, when Italian forces rigged the devices of the allied powers. And, as time goes by, tensions are continuing to rise in this area of the world, and now it could possibly lead to a full-scale response by Israel.