Two years ago today, on Sept. 17, 2024, at 3:30 p.m., beeping sounds began to emerge from the pockets of thousands of Hezbollah operatives across Lebanon. Seconds later, the pagers began to explode.
In Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and other locations, communication devices that Hezbollah had adopted precisely because it believed they were safer than cellular phones were transformed, within moments, into weapons against those carrying them. The explosions continued for about an hour. The following day came the second wave: radios used by the organization also exploded. Within two days, dozens were killed and thousands were wounded, including civilians.
It was later revealed that the operation was the result of an intelligence and deception apparatus built over years, including penetration of Hezbollah’s supply chain and the creation of a commercial infrastructure designed to induce Hezbollah itself to purchase the devices that had been prepared for it.
But the significance of what became known as the “Pager Operation” was not the number of casualties. It was that, at 3:30 that afternoon, the party determining the pace of the war changed.
To understand the significance of the event, one must remember where Israel stood that morning.
Nearly a year had passed since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre. Hezbollah had opened a northern front against Israel as early as Oct. 8, 2023, repeatedly fired rockets at the Jewish state and conditioned an end to the fighting on an end to the war in Gaza. Tens of thousands of Israelis were displaced from their homes. Communities along the Lebanese border almost became ghost towns. Homes, businesses and infrastructure were damaged, and Israeli families lived for months in hotels and temporary housing.
Israel found itself in an intolerable strategic situation: A terrorist organization backed by Iran had effectively succeeded in determining that tens of thousands of Israeli citizens could not live in part of their own country.
In relations between states, respect is not a substitute for diplomacy.
It was no coincidence that, only hours before the explosions, the Security Cabinet officially adopted the return of northern residents to their homes as one of the objectives of the war. The defense minister said at the time that the possibility of a diplomatic arrangement was diminishing because Hezbollah refused to separate the fighting in the north from the war in Gaza.
This was the moment when Israel faced a choice far more significant than the question of how to deal with another rocket barrage.
The question was who controlled reality. For months, Hezbollah held an important strategic advantage: It chose when to fire, where to fire and how far to escalate. Israel responded, thwarted attacks, struck and destroyed targets, but as long as tens of thousands of Israelis remained outside their homes, the enemy could claim that the equation of attrition was working in its favor.
The “Pager Operation” changed that equation.
It was not a preemptive strike in the classic sense, because Israel and Hezbollah were already in the midst of fighting. It was something no less important: a return to the initiative. Instead of waiting for the enemy’s next move, Israel moved first, penetrated the enemy’s systems and forced it to contend with a reality it had not planned for.
The damage was physical, but the psychological and organizational damage went even deeper.
Hezbollah discovered that it was not only its commanders, weapons depots and launchers that were exposed to Israeli intelligence. Its supply chain, communication systems and devices in the pockets of its operatives could also be under enemy control. Following the operation, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps even ordered its personnel to stop using certain communication devices and inspect their systems out of concern over similar penetration.
The initial shock inflicted on Hezbollah allowed Israel to exploit the moment of weakness and launch a series of targeted eliminations before the organization had time to recover.
On Sept. 20, 2024, Ibrahim Aqil, one of Hezbollah’s senior figures and the commander of its operations system, was killed in Beirut along with additional senior members of the Radwan Force. In the days that followed, Israel expanded its air campaign against infrastructure, launchers and command centers. On Sept. 27, Hezbollah’s central headquarters in the Dahiyeh was struck, and Hassan Nasrallah, the man who for more than three decades had shaped Hezbollah and turned it into Iran’s most important strategic arm in the Middle East, was killed.
The “Pager Operation” alone did not defeat Hezbollah. But it was the opening blow in a sequence of operations that, within weeks, transformed Hezbollah from an organization that believed it was deterring Israel into an organization trying to save its chain of command, communication systems and leadership.
This is the first lesson of Sept. 17: Deterrence is not created by declarations. It is created when the enemy discovers that the price and risk it calculated are not the price and risk it actually faces.
For years, it was common in Israel to speak of the need to “preserve deterrence.” But deterrence is not an asset deposited in a bank that earns interest. On the contrary, it erodes under the cost of inflation. It is tested anew every day. When a terrorist organization can drive tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes for months without paying a price that undermines its own sense of security, deterrence gradually disappears. Sept. 17 began to reverse that trend.
The second lesson is that excellent intelligence is worthless if there is no willingness to use it.
What was revealed after the operation shows that the success was not born overnight. According to testimony from former Mossad personnel, the penetration of Hezbollah’s communications network had been built over years, while development of the pager project began as early as 2022. Companies, supply chains, products and marketing mechanisms were constructed to induce the enemy to make the purchase itself.
Moreover, a country can possess the best intelligence in the world and still lose if its leadership is afraid to turn knowledge into action. Oct. 7 taught the price of a situation in which much is known, partial warnings are issued, assessments are made, interpretations are offered, discussions are held—and then one waits.
Sept. 17 reminded us of an older and simpler Zionist principle: The role of a sovereign state is not merely to know what its enemies are planning. Its role is to take the initiative, take our fate into our own hands and thwart the enemies’ plans.
The third lesson is that military success also changes diplomatic reality.
Israel is sometimes presented with an artificial choice between “force” and “diplomacy.” History teaches that this is a false binary. In the Middle East, effective diplomacy often comes after the battlefield changes the incentive structure.
Diplomacy did not replace force. Force created new conditions for diplomacy.
Until September 2024, international efforts focused on preventing escalation and achieving an arrangement that would keep Hezbollah and Israel away from a broader war. After the campaign against Hezbollah, in November 2024, the terror group agreed to a ceasefire based on U.N. Resolution 1701; the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces in the south; and the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces to the north of the Litani River. Israel made clear that it would no longer return to a reality in which security violations went unanswered.
Diplomacy did not replace force. Force created new conditions for diplomacy.
The impact extended beyond Lebanon.
When Syrian rebels launched their offensive at the end of November 2024, they encountered an Assad regime whose central pillars of support had been severely weakened. Hezbollah, which in the past had sent its best fighters to Syria to save dictator Bashar Assad and his regime, was occupied with rebuilding itself after the blows it had suffered from Israel. Iran was weaker, Russia was bogged down in Ukraine, and on Dec. 8, the Assad regime collapsed.
Sources and analyses published afterward explicitly pointed to the weakening of Hezbollah and Iran as one of the conditions that allowed the rebels to exploit this window of opportunity.
Israel did not bring down Assad through the pagers. But it broke a critical link in the regional system that had protected him.
One of the most important expressions of this change was also evident in the international arena. After Oct. 7, Israel was perceived by the international community as a wounded country, dependent on assistance, whose actions were open to restriction. Israel, it was believed, could be repeatedly told what it was not permitted to do.
But when Israel demonstrated that it was capable of striking Hezbollah, eliminating its leadership, standing up to direct attacks from Iran and changing the regional balance through force, the starting point of the conversation with Israel changed. Israel began to be perceived as a regional power capable of shaping reality. A country whose will, capabilities and red lines had to be taken into account.
The lesson is simple: In relations between states, respect is not a substitute for diplomacy. Power is one of the conditions that enables diplomacy based on respect rather than weakness.
Two years ago, Israel reminded its enemies of something they had begun to forget: The Jewish state possesses not only the ability to defend itself when attacked, but also the intelligence, sophistication, patience and power to choose the time, place and method of doing so.
That was the great significance of the “Pager Operation”: the initiative.
Zionism was not built on the hope that our enemies would change their intentions. It was built on the decision that the Jewish people would no longer entrust their security to others.
The Jewish state cannot afford to wait again and again until a threat materializes, until the enemy chooses the timing and until the world offers yet another arrangement that no one is willing to enforce.
We must see the threat, prepare the capability, choose the moment—and act. Because in the Middle East, whoever gives up the initiative winds up handing it over to the enemy.
