Abstract:
The Israel-Gaza conflict is a case study of imbalance of power in terms of technology, intelligence, military might and endurance between state and non-state actors. The involvement of Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi’s to some extent has allowed Israel to display its multi-spectrum warfare capacities in a broad domain involving their intelligence agencies which have coordinated with their military to deliver credible blows to their adversaries. Israel thus has demonstrated the capacity to engage and disable the capabilities of multi-front non-state threats. But do this technological warfare strategies herald a new beginning in the anti-terror policies all over the world? Two events from the Israel-Gaza conflict: the Lebanon’s pager explosions against Hezbollah members and accurate geolocation of Hezbollah’s chief are used as case studies in this paper to determine whether those tactics can act as credible measures for nations facing similar threats. Also, the global impact, scope, limitations and future improvements of these operations will also be scrutinized to understand whether these types of operations can be repeated in future in alternate theatres for other nations to generate effective deterrence against terrorist groups.
Keywords:technological-warfare, Israel-Gaza conflict, anti-terror operations, sonic-boom geolocating, intelligence
Background:
The Israel-Hamas conflict is a case study for global militaries in terms of use of technology to degrade terror organisations. As terror organisations generally follow a guerrilla warfare strategy to surprise and inflict damages on their targets, Israel has reversed that trend to confuse and dismantle the terror infrastructure of Hamas and Hezbollah thereby proving that anti-terror operations could incorporate a scope for usage of new scientific methodologies which in turn degrades the confidence of terror groups. This paper critically examines two case studies from the current Gaza conflict to understand Israel’s use of technology to engage and disable the capabilities of multi-front non-state threats. Thus, we get to understand whether those strategies can be used as one-time stand-alone practices or can be incorporated as regularised anti-terror doctrine for states the world over.
Case study 1-Lebanon pager blasts:
On 17th October 2024, pagers used by members of Hezbollah terror group exploded mysteriously and simultaneously in Lebanon, killing nine and injuring several others. Those killed and injured included high profile targets including Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani and son of a Hezbollah member in Parliament. Hezbollah had earlier banned the use of cell phones due to fear of getting tracked by Israeli intelligence. The blasts were carried out by sabotaging the supply chain and contaminating the pagers with explosives. British army experts suggested the use of small explosive charges, the size of a pencil eraser, put inside the pagers by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. The blast occurred when an error message was sent to all the pagers making them vibrate, making the members to click the buttons to cancel the vibration leading to detonations (Mroue et al, 2024). This was followed by a second wave of attacks the next day when walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded in large numbers. The sophistication of the attacks pointed towards a lengthy planning process which would involve getting physical access to pagers prior to being sold to Hezbollah, developing technologies that would be embedded in communication devices and cultivating sources who could confirm that targets were carrying the devices (Philips et al., 2024).
Past Israeli planned communication-devices explosions:
Mossad is known to carry out remote explosions to hit its targets and Lebanon’s pager blasts are not a first of its kind. In 1970’s Israel planted explosives in oil and fuel drums which were distributed to families of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters. In 1973, Israel hid explosives in marble stand of phone of PLO leader Mahmoud Hamshari and exploded the device after confirming his identity by phone in Paris. In 2009, Israel killed Imad Mugniyeh, a terrorist by planting a bomb in the spare wheel compartment of his SUV (Trenta, 2024).
In 1996, a sabotaged mobile phone was used to blow up then Hamas’s chief bomb maker Yahya Ayyash in Gaza City (Sabbagh, 2024). Mossad had also utilized similar tactics to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program when they sabotaged nuclear and missile sites and duped Iran’s purchasing networks to buy flawed equipment which was used in Natanz nuclear reactors (Melman, 2020). Those flawed equipments were supplied from a chip factory outside of Iran which Israel had managed to control (Makhoul, 2024).
Role of intelligence and shell companies:
The Lebanon pager blasts operation contained elements of intelligence, nexus of product suppliers and sophisticated technology. To begin with, Mossad hatched this plan a decade ago when they developed shell companies to sell these modified pagers covertly containing batteries embedded with made in Israel explosives. To increase their reach towards Hezbollah members, Mossad created fake marketing campaigns promoting the pagers as robust, dustproof, and waterproof (Jerusalem Post, 2024). Isarel already knew that Hezbollah had placed an order for about 5,000 pagers after banning the use of smartphones in February 2024 (Sabbagh et al, 2024). To ensure successful purchase, the price of pagers was kept low enough to make Hezbollah feel it was a good deal, but not too low to arouse suspicions. The pager ringtone was set as urgent. The time to respond to message was also calculated intelligently as seven seconds corresponding to the timer on the explosive charge. Next Mossad is reported to have supplied them to Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo via shell companies in Hungary and also manufactured under licence. Mossad also reportedly hired a specific Gold Apollo saleswoman, who donated the first batch of pagers to Hezbollah while 5,000 follow-on orders were placed by September 2024 (Newdick, 2024).
There are denials from both Hungarian and Taiwanese companies which deepens the mystery how the pagers were infiltrated. Gold Apollo stated that they merely authorised the use of its name on AR-924 pagers which are said to be manufactured by Hungary based firm BAC Consulting KFT. They exported mainly to European and American countries and not to Lebanon. On the other hand, BAC Consulting KFT Chief Executive Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono denied the role of their company in production of these pagers (Euronews, 2024). But BAC Consulting was registered in the recent past as a limited liability company in May 2022. People are still unable to link BAC with the Lebanon pager attacks since the Hungarian government officials said the pagers were never in Hungary and BAC Consultants merely acted as an intermediary (Spike, 2024). The above situation makes the picture quite clear that the operation was executed by Mossad in such a way that no government or company could be blamed by the international community for supplying the deadly pagers to Hezbollah. While the Taiwanese company’s statements seem more genuine and valid, the establishment of Hungarian BAC consulting in 2022 could be a handiwork of Israel but no evidence exists as of now. With regards to the radio walkie-talkies which exploded a day after the pagers, they had stickers bearing the logo of ICOM, a Japanese company, which manufactures radio equipment. But ICOM which manufactures such radios in Japan, could not confirm whether they shipped the radios that exploded in Lebanon, as they stopped manufacturing that specific model 10 years ago (Unit for Political Studies, 2024).
Modus-operandi behind blasts:
The pagers were exploited in various phases for causing blasts. Battery manipulation/tampering of vulnerable pagers by inducing conditions like overcharging or short-circuiting can lead to thermal runaway which could create explosive blasts. This tampering with components could have occurred during manufacturing. The final phase is the remote triggering capability which utilizes the remote signals to activate pagers (Aditya, 2024). Here it is important to underline the emergence of cyber physical attack which targeted the hardware security of pagers and where the boundary between the digital and the physical entities got erased (Soni, 2024). But experts are still divided whether pager blasts were actually a result of cyber-attacks. The pagers were activated shortly before detonating explosively, unlike the smoke and high temperatures typically observed from overheating lithium-ion batteries. It is also very challenging for Israel to contain a cyber-attack conducted on these pagers through malware as that carries a risk of being reverse-engineered and repurposed. All these points towards Israel’s cyberespionage capabilities to some extent (Singh & Hokayem, 2024).
Generally, cybersecurity attacks through supply chain are targeted at the software. But in Lebanon hardware supply chain attack was attempted which is rarer. Mossad is reported to have injected a board containing explosive materials inside the pager which was hard to detect through scanners or any other means (Middle East Eye, 2024). Any explosive’s main feature is the critical diameter which defines how small it can be designed. There is also the need of an effective initiator or detonator. Israelis may have implanted a very small amount of explosive, of highly explosive material in the pager’s electronic circuit (Chadwick, 2024).
Understanding wider implications:
The pager blasts operation of Israel has various lessons and implications. At tactical level, Hezbollah lost its ability to communicate at a large level and the psychological impact of the blasts was unprecedented which is a huge success for Israel (Lischinsky, 2024). At strategic level there are favourable outcomes for Isarel. For example, Iran feared that this type of operation could also be carried out inside Iran, so Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) instructed its members to stop using any type of communication devices as it was concerned about possible infiltration by Israeli agents. Iran’s defence industry has already developed its own military-grade secure radio transmissions to avoid communicating via foreign products (Nakhoul, 2024). Iran is reported to rely on end-to-end encryption in messaging systems in the aftermath of the Lebanon attacks as it was mainly concerned about the protection of its nuclear and missile facilities (Reuters, 2024).
Inspite of Iran’s cautious posture, Israel has achieved strategic gains in the current battlefield. Experts have various opinions. Marc Polymeropoulos a non-resident senior fellow at the Forward Defense practice of Atlantic Council underlines the Israeli strategy of ‘escalate to de-escalate’ which means that Israel sent a brutal warning to Hezbollah. This event sowed seeds of distrust among members of Hezbollah which could paralyse the group. Another expert, Jonathan Panikoff from same institution states that the psychological impact of this operation will lead to internal conundrum. But in contrast to above views Kirsten Fontenrose believes that this operation will alert the other terror planners and fighters in Iran’s Axis of Resistance to stop using their phones, pagers or walkie-talkies which could slow down other global intelligence community’s initiatives in the region (Atlantic Council, 2024). Israel can also gain favourable conflict-management understandings/deals with Hezbollah by forcing Hezbollah to remove their military assets from the northern border along Lebanon (Satloff, 2024).
The dominance of Western companies particularly in encrypted communications is highlighted, but equally important is the use of such companies to be set-up and used by intelligence agencies for covert operations (Shadi & Ahmed, 2024). The impact of supply chain attacks is long-lasting and can’t be comprehended easily. One aspect is that it reduces the public trust regarding the usage of electronic devices. As a result, countries could start to adopt policies which advocate for producing indigenous technology to maintain stricter control over supply chains protocols, like the US CHIPS Act. This in turn can lead to technology cold-war by raising technology barriers (Dalati, 2024). Unlike Hezbollah which didn’t have access to reputable devices, the high value personnel who have access to premium devices may come on the hitlist because even the reputable and established firms’ devices could be intercepted, opened, tampered with, and resealed to customers (Lin, 2024).
The popularization of such operations and related technology could have adverse impacts. Technology journalists have reported that even normal mobile phone batteries could be triggered remotely to overheat. That raises the concern for safety for use of electronic devices in airlines, public transport, schools, hospitals, cinemas etc (Shaheen, 2024). One expert has pointed out the dangerous precedent set by this operation, noting that communication equipment’s owned by state ministers or other important individuals could be similarly rigged to capture recordings, listen to live conversations, or even activate cameras covertly. From international security perspective, even states can use such tactics. There could be possibilities that software for controlling cranes unloading merchandise owned by China could have potential hidden backdoors that could be exploited against the US at seaports (Salmon, 2024).
Limitations of low-intensity warfare:
Though Israel’s operation heralds a new form of warfare against non-state groups, it has certain limitations. Innovations in battery technology which prevents manipulation to ensure stability under extreme conditions could prevent such tactics. The verification of devices at every stage of their lifecycle for integrity can help clients to detect flaws but it also slows down the process of shipping (Aditya, 2024). Unfortunately, these kinds of attacks don’t require the resources/expertise of a nation state only. They can be planned and executed from motivated individuals or groups if they can access the personal devices of their targets (Ryan, 2024). This means that someday even non-state terror groups can attempt such attacks to spread mass casualty and fear. Also, the fact that these kinds of operations are just onetime attempts and can’t be repeated with the same device like pagers as in Israel’s case is a drawback (Bob, 2024). Hybrid devices used as a weapon generally have a poor shelf life. They always carry the risk of getting exposed which can make it lose its military value. Therefore, sabotaged electronic devices can only be detonated at a particular time or opportunity and not at any state or group’s own will, time or choice which diminishes their utility (Pytlak et al, 2024). Sometimes the state authorities may have differing voices/opinions within themselves such as the decision makers and political parties. Israel’s think-tank experts have also reacted cautiously against the pager blasts and are not too optimistic. Instead, they are hoping for a political process that establishes a front against the Iranian axis (Shelah, 2024).
Volker Turk, the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location and their surroundings at the time of the attack, violates international human rights law and, to the extent applicable, international humanitarian law and those who ordered and carried out the attacks must be held to account (Serhan, 2024). Therefore, major outrage and resistance to such tech-war operations may come from the legal perspective. Lebanon blasts may come under the purview of law of armed conflict, or International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Violations of the IHL can be triggered on various aspects. Lack of distinction of the targets as lawful targets is one flaw of such low-intensity warfare. Proportionality of the attacks is often violated under IHL due to harm to civilians and civilian objects and discredit military benefits. The absence of precautions taken to protect civilians also harms the reputation of attacker. Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons prohibits the use of certain weapons like pagers as boobytraps under Article 7(2). Article 7(3) of Amended Protocol II prohibits use of booby-trap weapons in areas where combat between ground forces is not taking place or does not appear to be imminent and has similar population of civilians (Finucane, 2024). Peter Stano, Lead Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union has condemned the explosion of a high number of electronic devices across Lebanon and termed that as unacceptable and called for an independent investigation.
Case study 2: Hezbollah chief’s targeting:
After Lebanon’s pager attacks, Israel also successfully killed Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike in southern suburb of Beirut in last week of September 2024. Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani revealed that U.S. supplied 1,000-pound bunker buster ammunitions were used to blow the headquarter of Hezbollah in Dahiyeh (Mroue & Lidman, 2024). It was further reported that he was attacked in Hezbollah’s war operations room from where he used to plan his operations (Chehayeb, 2025).
Application of intelligence:
According to unsubstantiated reports via French newspaper Le Parisien, an Iranian mole provided the information that Hassan Nasrallah was on his way to his underground bunker. Israel’s airforce was also tracking the location for a long time. The challenge for intelligence agencies was not to let the target escape by getting information about fighter jets’ arrival or the launch of munitions towards the target. This kind of comprehensive intelligence often involved human intelligence (Sabbagh, 2024). The Israeli spies succeeded in tracking down the exact movements of Hezbollah members by hacking into their communication devices, surveillance cameras and their car’s odometers (Reyes, 2024).
Mossad also recruited human sources within Hezbollah to plant listening devices in bunkers to expose hideout locations (Wallace, 2024). Israel spent around 20 years of intelligence efforts focusing on Hezbollah (Samia et al, 2024). Israel strategically timed the airstrike to coincide with the meeting of Nasrallah with Hezbollah leaders (Shafaq news, 2024).
Apart from the intense intelligence, which was gathered for the above operation, it has also come to light that Israel used innovative tracking methods to track Nasrallah. Unverified reports from Saudi news channel Al Hadath stated that an unidentified man travelled from Iran to Beirut to meet Nasrallah with the sole purpose of transferring a traceable substance onto Nasrallah's palm by shaking his hand. This substance was constantly being tracked by Israeli agencies (Fink & Zbeedat, 2024).
Geolocation through sonic boom:
A western expert has speculated the use of Israeli air-force direct involvement in tracking Hezbollah chief through sonic booms generated by fighter jets flying in excess of speeds of Mach 1. Guy Cramer, president of Hyper stealth assesses those Israeli jets flew a specific pattern of Mach 1+ overflights over the area of interest from where Nasrallah did live broadcast of his public speech about the pager blasts. Israeli technicians are likely to have reviewed that speech later for studying those sounds on the recording which could have allowed them to triangulate his precise location using Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI could have been used to review the speech in close real time and decode the flight paths of the numerous Israeli jets to analyse the sound data to extract his geolocation. This technique has future applications for geolocating any person doing a live video feed with a time stamp on any communication device. Further tracking the sound of detonation of weapons in a battlefield on those devices could also help in geolocation (Cramer, 2024).
Limitations of geolocating:
Does the method of successful targeting of Hezbollah chief makes a way forward to apply such tactics in other locations or with other targets? It has to be acknowledged that Israeli intelligence agencies reach is far higher than any other nation except the US. Cultivation of moles and spies is a yearlong process and not every country can develop such networks in any other country. Lebanon as a country was already under political shambles and Israel found it easier to find dissenters which won’t happen normally in a politically strong functioning country. Air-strike is also a bit difficult in nations with contested airspaces with air-defence systems. As observed in previous sections, hacking into communication devices of terror group requires the use of sophisticated software like Pegasus which no other nation apart from Isarel has achieved so far. The sonic boom methodology being discussed by western experts is a next-generation tracking methodology and nations will require to explore the use of AI to utilise those techniques, but the way the Israelis jets used the sonic booms can’t be replicated in nations with air-defence.
Impact analysis and conclusion:
As observed in the above sections, Israel executed some unique and first of its kind anti-terror operations in the current Gaza conflict. The effectiveness of Lebanon’s pager blasts was immense, but can that be applied in other global theatres with other terror groups? It will be extremely difficult to execute such operations in other theatres because Israel invested heavily towards developing its ground and human intelligence in the Middle east over a period of several years. Also as seen with the reports the intelligence agencies themselves admit that repeating such operations will be impossible because such operations typically alert the terror groups and they adopt measures to safeguard themselves. The second aspect of Lebanon blast deals with setting up of device manufacturing shell companies overseas which also is a time taking and a labourious process. The third aspect deals with remote trigger process of explosions over a wide area at a specific time which again is highly complex and depends on a nation’s technological dominance. Since the American intelligence was also caught off-guard with Israel’s operations it will be apt to acknowledge that developing such cyber-attack capabilities can be extremely complex and difficult for other agencies. The only scope for improvement in this method is to address the issue of counter-moles/counterintelligence which can inform the designated targets that can disrupt the timing of operations as that happened with Israel.
The second extraordinary operation of geolocating and targeting the Hezbollah chief again will be a difficult process to replicate in other theatres because the Israel-Gaza conflict was primarily fought in an air-domain with absence of any significant air-defence challenges to Israeli air-force. The use of sonic booms is an assessment which is at a preliminary stage and not yet confirmed by any Israeli official, but its application is real and can be used in a hypothetical scenario. The extensive use of AI to measure the sound and time parameters to determine the exact underground location of the target is an application which can be utilized by other militaries, but successful targeting may depend on other hard parameters like political will, force coordination, deterrence offered in other possible theatres. But the theory and technology of use of sonic booms for geolocating itself is unique and can be achieved in real world conditions with adequate precision and accuracy. The improvements which could be applied in this case is the use of such methods in the presence of contested air-defence environments which could challenge the fighter jets to gain a low-altitude flight path and release the sonic-booms.
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