Two years after the Hezbollah pager operation, new details are emerging about the steps Israel took before thousands of devices carried by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon. Among them, according to former defense minister Yoav Gallant, was the killing of a Hezbollah member who suspected the pagers had been booby-trapped, as well as the destruction of equipment brought in to test them. To prevent Hezbollah from realizing Israel feared the plan had been exposed, the strikes also included other targets.
“What was on the table was the operation to eliminate Hezbollah’s fighting force using communications devices,” Gallant said in the first interview he gave after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired him, speaking to Nadav Eyal of Yedioth Ahronoth in February 2025.
Yoav Gallant, former defense minister
(Photo: Ziv Koren)
The communications devices, which had also been rigged and were detonated only after the pagers because the pager operation was in danger of being uncovered, had originally been intended as the main strike.
“So we have three different events,” Gallant said. “First, we suspect that someone in Hezbollah has figured out the pager story. We find the reason and eliminate him, but testing equipment arrives in Lebanon. We destroy that too, together with other things.”
“Then it becomes clear to us that some pagers are already being examined. That, for lack of a choice, means we have to act, because the operation is important and has dramatic value, but its power is part of an entire campaign,” Gallant said.
“In practice, we activate the pagers, an operation that had been ready for a decade, and the result is very impressive. Hezbollah has more than 2,000 wounded, finger, eye and thigh injuries,” he said.
“But the main operation involving the communications devices, which were several times greater in number and contained several times more explosives, was activated a day later, when the overwhelming majority of the devices were in warehouses and exploded there, so the effect was not fully realized. And that too simply passes by. In other words, these were a series of disconnected events.”
“The only time it was connected to one complete concept was on October 11, 2023,” Gallant said.
According to Gallant, what was on the table that day was “the operation to eliminate Hezbollah’s fighting force using communications devices,” an operation he said Netanyahu ultimately canceled.
Gallant’s remarks were barred from publication at the time by the military censor and have now been cleared for release as part of a new film, Paging Hezbollah, scheduled to be released in the United States next month.
Netanyahu appears in the film as the leader who directed the operation, alongside former Mossad chief Dedi Barnea, then-Northern Command chief Uri Gordin and others. Gallant himself was not interviewed for the film, which was directed by right-wing conservative filmmaker Justin Pollak.
Netanyahu had already disclosed some of the details in April 2025, surprising security officials because the information had remained classified until then.
“In the third week of September, we learned that Hezbollah had sent three pagers to Iran for inspection,” Netanyahu said at a conference, according to a Channel 12 report.
“Before that, we bombed one such scanner they were about to bring in. We got rid of it, and also of the guy who operated it.”