Pager detonations in Lebanon will not trigger wider escalation — Phar Kim Beng

Pager detonations in Lebanon will not trigger wider escalation — Phar Kim Beng


Thursday, 19 Sep 2024 8:11 AM MYT


SEPTEMBER 19 — While some of the pagers of the members of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon all went off simultaneously or within a window of 30 minutes after the first spate of explosions, injuring even the Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon on September 17 2024, the right context as usual must be understood too. Without which the world would be scared witless that Israel has a choke hold on all kinds of technology. They don’t.

The roughly 2800 pagers that combusted were bought 5 months ago. Sky News Arabia quotes sources saying that yesterday’s large-scale pager attack in Lebanon was possible because the Mossad spy agency got hold of Hezbollah’s communication devices before they were handed over to the terror group five months ago.

The Israeli spy agency placed a quantity of PETN, a highly explosive material, on the batteries of the devices, and detonated them by raising the temperature of the batteries from afar, the source said. Granted that Israel neither confirms nor denies their military assassinations, it is noteworthy that The Times of Israel picked up the story of the Sky News Arabia too.

As of September 18, 2024, a total of nine people were killed. Those whose pagers exploded spoke of their devices becoming increasingly hot, before they caught on fire, in a series of implosions that shocked the people in Lebanon if not the world when the events hit world headlines. In all, TRT Turkey reported that more than 1,000 people were injured, with the New York Times, stating that nine of the victims had perished.

4. Hezbollah even confirmed, as reported in The Guardian that the incidents last night was one of the “most serious security breaches in recent times.” Given that clarity is now being distilled through Sky News, Wall Street Journal, theguardian.com and elsewhere, one shouldn’t assume that the Middle East, once again, is on the brink of triggering World War III.

To begin with, the Western governments, indulgent as they are with Israel, do not necessarily like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (also known as Bibi).

Prior to the incursion of October 7, 2023, for instance, Israelis themselves were staging 22 months of civil protests against the rule of Bibi and his most “ultra right wing Cabinet,” in the history of Israel since 1948.

Indeed, while the Biden Administration, for example, welcomed Israeli opposition leader General Benny Grantz — granting him two visits to the White House in 2022 and 2023 respectively — while denying Bibi from having any similar privileges during the whole of the 22 months civil protest against his rule in Israel, the fact is the sensational nature of the October 7, 2023 made Israel looked completely vulnerable.

It was then that the Biden Administration and the West stepped up to back Israel to the hilt. Many of whom are beginning to rue the haste with which they had rushed to back Bibi. The likes of Belgium, Ireland, Spain and Norway do not necessarily see eye-to-eye with Bibi. Why ?

The latter and his ultra far right parties, not excluding the settler colonies, do not seem to care about the international humanitarian laws, otherwise known as the “Laws of War.”

Nor does Bibi and his War Cabinet want to halt their military aggression against Gaza, West Bank, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon; and even Iran at one stage. Bibi and the far right are on a genocidal rampage in Gaza but are bent on starting a regional war, with the aim to attack Iran in the main. Ostensibly to stop Teheran from its nuclear weapons program.

Yet Iran has exercised tremendous self restraint not to be sucked into the vortex of Bibi and its War Cabinet’s conflict with various states and sub-state actors.

Even in the heat of Iranian and Israeli military exchanges barely a few months.

* Phar Kim Beng is CEO of the Strategic Pan Indo Pacific Arena (SPIPA).