Pagers, beds and phones: Latest Lebanon attack in Israel's history of bold covert ops

LONDON -- The unassuming pager took its place in the annals of Israeli covert operations history in September, when thousands of the credit card-sized devices served as tiny Trojan horses for explosive charges as they were held by likely Hezbollah operatives.

The pager detonations in Lebanon and Syria on Sept. 17 were followed by the explosion -- around 24 hours later -- of walkie-talkies, used by Hezbollah as a communications network after its beepers were compromised.

The attacks, which killed 37 people and wounded 2,931, according to Lebanese authorities, were several years in the making, a source told ABC News. The disruption and damage they wrought was "unprecedented in the history of the resistance in Lebanon," Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah -- himself killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Sept. 27 -- said.

Sources confirmed to ABC News that Israel was responsible for the pager explosions.

Israel -- which rarely confirms or denies responsibility for covert operations or attacks on foreign soil -- offered no confirmation of responsibility for the attacks. President Isaac Herzog even told Sky News he "rejects out of hand any connection to this or that source of operation."

Orna Mizrahi of the Institute for National Security Studies think tank in Israel told ABC News that the communication devices operations stand out due to "the amount of people that were eliminated."

"We don't call it assassination; we call it elimination," said Mizrahi, who previously served in the Israel Defense Forces' Military Intelligence Research Division and in the prime minister's office as deputy national security adviser for foreign policy.

The attacks represent a world-first, Mizrahi said. "It's a real invention."

As to the criticism of the mass detonation of the devices, Mizrahi responded: "The terrorists are the only ones that used them. So, it is like a bullet in the hand of your enemy. But it wasn't a bullet. It was something that was exploding in their hands."

The operation drew on a long history of audacious -- though not always successful or discriminate -- covert Israeli targeted killings all over the Middle East. Though Israel generally does not confirm involvement in such operations, top Israeli officials have made clear their position against what they deem to be threats to national security.

As Israel's outgoing spy chief Yossi Cohen said in 2021 regarding reported targeted killings in Iran: "If the man constitutes a capability that endangers the citizens of Israel, he must stop existing."

Mizrahi said those conducting such "elimination" operations usually do so based on one or more of three criteria. The target might be a "very important terrorist" with significant influence and capabilities, she said.

The target may be a long-standing one, with plans put in place and those executing them waiting for the right moment to strike, Mizrahi added.

Or, the eventual target may be identified as part of an imminent attack "and you want to intercept it and to stop it," she added.

"It's always people that are from what we understand is a terror organization, that are threatening Israel or in the midst of launching some kind of attack against Israel," Mizrahi said.

"We don't eliminate people just like that," she added, noting that Israeli forces will "usually" want to ensure "there is very little collateral damage, not too many civilians."

Past operations have been abandoned due to the likelihood of civilian casualties, Mizrahi said. "When you are in a war, you cannot be so cautious," she added.

A bloody history

Within years of the country's bloody, but ultimately successful, War of Independence in 1948, Israel's clandestine services were waging assassination campaigns against the many surrounding forces and states deemed threats to the young nation's survival.

Its military and intelligence services were staffed by many who participated in the Jewish insurgency against the entity known as Mandatory Palestine, the British-run territory designated by the League of Nations in the aftermath of World War II.

In 1956, for example, parcel bombs were used to kill Egyptian military officials Col. Mustafa Hafez and Lt. Col. Salah Mustafa in Egypt and Jordan, respectively, both of whom organized Palestinian militant raids into Israel.

As Israeli identity and policy were forged in the crucible of war, insurgency and terrorism, the country's clandestine operations took on greater ingenuity and complexity -- though direct methods of killing have remained in regular use through the nation's 76 years, spanning the technological spectrum from shootings to airstrikes.

September's explosions in Lebanon will go down as one of the most unusual attacks in Israeli -- or wider international covert operations -- history, given the delivery method of the explosives, the number of those killed or wounded and the intimate access to Hezbollah it demonstrated.

But it was not the first time Israel sought to turn everyday items into weapons. In 1972, for example, Palestine Liberation Organization cadre Bassam Abu Sharif -- a former senior advisor to PLO chief Yasser Arafat -- lost four fingers plus the use of one ear and one eye when a book sent to him by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, exploded in his hands in Beirut. Israel never officially took responsibility.

The killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian Black September militant group set in motion a brutal and sprawling revenge campaign -- known as Operation Wrath of God -- that would see Mossad operatives turn unassuming items into weapons.

Mossad's long-established policy of public silence meant it never claimed even the most sophisticated assassinations credited to the agency. But David Kimche, the former deputy head of Mossad, explained of the retaliation campaign: "The aim was not so much revenge but mainly to make them frightened."

"We wanted to make them look over their shoulders and feel that we are upon them. And therefore, we tried not to do things by just shooting a guy in the street -- that's easy."

Mahmoud Hamshari -- the PLO's representative in Paris -- for example, died of wounds sustained in his Paris apartment in December 1972, when Mossad agents detonated explosives packed into the base of his telephone.

Hussein Al Bashir, a representative of Palestinian group Fatah, was killed the following month in Cyprus by a bomb concealed in his hotel bed.

Death by communication device was a common theme in the years after Hamshari's killing.

In 1996, for example, internal security agency Shin Bet tricked Yahya Ayyash -- an infamous Hamas bombmaker accused of killing dozens of Israelis -- into accepting a call using a cellphone given to him by a Palestinian collaborator. The phone detonated as he held it to his head, killing him instantly.

Samih Malabi, a member of Fatah's Tanzim militant wing, was also killed by an exploding cellphone in 2000.

Another three Palestinians and alleged militants -- Osama Fatih al-Jawabra, Iyad Mohammed Hardan and Muhammad Ishteiwi Abayat -- were killed by explosions in phone booths in 2001 and 2002.

Among one of the highest profile assassinations was a joint Mossad-CIA operation targeting Imad Mughniyah -- Hezbollah's international operations chief -- who was killed in a suburb of Damascus in 2008. Neither Mossad nor the CIA ever took credit publicly.

A bomb concealed in a car's spare tire exploded as Mughniyah walked past. It was detonated remotely by agents in Tel Aviv, using operatives on the ground in the Syrian capital to guide the plot's final execution, according to a Washington Post report citing five former U.S. intelligence officials.

In Iran, too, the hand of Israeli intelligence is credited with several high-profile killings. Israel was behind a rash of assassinations of nuclear scientists between 2007 and 2012 -- often using magnetic car bombs or via drive-by shootings, according to Iran.

So, too, was it responsible for the killing of the alleged head of Iran's nuclear weapons program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, reportedly assassinated on a highway outside Tehran by a remote-controlled machine gun in 2020.

Israel's highest-profile recent killing -- that of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July -- reportedly relied not on an innocuous item but on deep penetration of enemy security networks.

Haniyeh was killed by a bomb planted in a guesthouse he often used when visiting the Iranian capital.

The operation bypassed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' protection of the building, emplacing the device two months before Haniyeh's visit, according to reporting in the The New York Times citing five anonymous Middle Eastern officials

Blowback and civilian casualties

For all their ingenuity, Israel's targeted killings also brought civilian casualties, political embarrassment and diplomatic blowback.

It remains unclear how many civilians were among the thousands injured in the recent device explosions in Lebanon and Syria. At least two children were among the dead. Additional civilians were killed in the subsequent Beirut airstrike that assassinated Hezbollah operations chief Ibrahim Aqil and 14 other members, Lebanese authorities said.

Among the most infamous bungled efforts was Israel's attempted assassination of Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan in 1997. Mossad agents using fake Canadian passports poisoned Mashaal outside of Hamas' office in the capital Amman by holding a device to his ear.

Several agents were subsequently captured and, as Mashaal's condition deteriorated, Jordan's King Hussein -- with the backing of then-President Bill Clinton -- pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into providing the antidote and saving Mashaal's life.

Israel's Wrath of God operations from 1972 onward caused several notable civilian casualties. The commando squads hunting Palestinian militant leaders in Beirut in April 1973 killed two Lebanese police officers and one Italian citizen in their search for targets. Among them was Black September operations leader Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar, whose wife was also killed.

In July 1973, Mossad brought chaos to the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer in their search for Black September operations chief Ali Hassan Salameh.

Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan waiter, was shot dead after agents falsely identified him as Salameh. Five Mossad agents were eventually convicted of the killing, and not returned to Israel until 1975.

A follow-up effort took place at a house in the southern Spanish city of Tarifa. Mossad agents reportedly killed a security guard but did not locate Salameh.

Israel finally killed Salameh in Beirut in 1979, detonating a bomb attached to a parked car as his convoy passed. Salameh died shortly after in the hospital.

As well as his four bodyguards, the blast killed four bystanders and injured 16 more. Among the dead were a British student and a German nun.

ABC News' Dana Savir and Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.