Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted the IDF's role behind the pager bomb attack on Hezbollah that killed around 39 and injured more than 3,000 people in Lebanon, reports said.
The tactical attack aimed to dismantle Hezbollah fighters and its leaders was carried out on September 17 and 18 in Lebanon and Syria.
“The pager operation and the elimination of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah were carried out despite the opposition of senior officials in the defence establishment and those responsible for them in the political echelon,” Netanyahu reportedly said, in a not-very-oblique dig at IDF and intelligence chiefs, as well as his recently fired defence minister, Yoav Gallant.
Last week Netanyahu dismissed defence minister Yoav Gallant, citing a lack of trust, and replaced him with Israel Katz, who was previously serving as foreign minister. Gallant had clashed with Netanyahu multiple times during their government.
Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant have clashed repeatedly over the course of their time in government together. Netanyahu also tried to get rid of him in March 2023 as well, a day after Gallant called for pausing the legislation process of the government’s contentious judicial overhaul plan arguing that it caused divisions that posed a threat to national security, but had to reinstate him due to massive public protests.
He was the defence minister when Hamas committed its deadly terror assault in southern Israel on October 7 last year and had so far carried out his duties in the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip, the fighting on the northern border, and the ground operation in southern Lebanon.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Gallant said that he was fired because of differences on the issue of the need to draft ultra-orthodox men in the Israel Defence Forces, the imperative to bring back the hostages from Gaza, and the need for establishing a state commission of inquiry to look into the October 7 Hamas terror attack and the ensuing war.
Netanyahu has resisted taking responsibility for the country’s security oversights, blaming Israel’s security forces for the failure to foresee Hamas’ October 7 massacre.
He has also ducked calls for a public commission of inquiry to be constituted into events leading up to it.
Despite their direct role in the attacks, Israel had not publicly acknowledged their role in the attack that targeted and killed several Hezbollah members and also civilians.
As per the media reports, the pager bomb attack on Hezbollah was a highly classified operation conducted by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, which fooled Hezbollah into buying the compromised devices.
Earlier, the Lebanese health ministry announced that the country’s death toll in the Israel-Hezbollah war had crossed 3,000 without distinguishing civilians and combatants.
On the other hand, IDF said that they had killed around 3,000 Hezbollah operatives and 100 members of other resistance groups in Lebanon.
According to the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), specifically Protocol II regulates the use of mines, booby traps, and other devices.
Revised in 1996, the protocol prohibits or restricts booby traps that can indiscriminately affect civilians, mandating protections to minimise civilian harm and banning traps that mimic harmless objects likely to attract non-combatants.
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