Why Israel hit Hezbollah with a surprise device attack and heres what comes next

The Israeli intelligence operation against Hezbollah, which saw thousands of booby-trapped pagers, walkie-talkies and other electronic devices exploding by remote control, will significantly damage the ability of the Lebanese terror group to fight against Israel, experts told The Post.But the question remains: Why would Israel order the blasts now?One answer could lie in the north of the Jewish state, where Hezbollah has been launching near-daily airstrikes — starting almost immediately after Hamas’ horrific Oct.7 attack on Israeli civilians, said Nicolas Carl, research manager for the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project.“Israeli senior political and military leaders have been very clear in this time that they see the security situation along their northern border as unsustainable,” Carl told The Post.

As the war on Hamas in Gaza reaches its one-year mark, the Israel Defense Forces now aim to push Hamas’ larger, more powerful allied organization in Lebanon away from its northern border, Carl said.Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran and include the destruction of the state of Israel in their demands.The Hezbollah airstrikes have forced many civilians living in the northernmost territories of Israel to flee.“[Israelis] need to, as they put it, change the security situation so that they can secure a lot of these northern communities and all these displaced peoples who have been forced to evacuate their homes because of the near constant bombardment by Lebanese Hezbollah into Israel,” Carl said.On Monday – just a day before roughly 2,800 people were injured in Mossad’s head-turning pager attack – the Israeli security cabinet approved “returning the residents of the north securely to their homes” as a formal war objective.The move marked “the first time that northern Israel is officially included in Israel’s stated war objectives,” according to a joint report by the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical ...