September 17: The Day the Equation Changed

Two years ago today, on September 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.

The following day came the second wave: radios used by the organization exploded as well. Within two days, dozens were killed and thousands were wounded. The importance of what became known as the “pager operation” was not in the number of casualties. It was that at 3:30 p.m., the identity of the side setting 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 October 7. Hezbollah had opened the northern front as early as October 8, 2023, repeatedly fired at Israel, and conditioned an end to the fighting on an end to the war in Gaza. Communities along the Lebanese border became ghost towns. Homes, businesses, and infrastructure were damaged, and Israeli families lived in temporary housing.

Israel was militarily strong, but in the north it found itself in an intolerable situation: a terrorist organization backed by Iran had effectively succeeded in determining that tens of thousands of Israeli civilians could not live in part of their own country.

The pager operation broke that reality.

It was not a preemptive strike in the classical 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 its system, and forced it to confront a reality it had not planned for.

The damage was physical, but the psychological and organizational damage was even deeper.

Hezbollah discovered that not only were its commanders, weapons depots, and launchers exposed to Israeli intelligence. Its supply chain, communications systems, and the devices in the pockets of its operatives could also be under enemy control.

The initial shock that struck Hezbollah allowed Israel to exploit the moment of weakness and begin a chain of targeted eliminations before the organization had time to recover.

On September 20, Ibrahim Aqil, one of Hezbollah’s senior figures and commander of its operations apparatus, was killed in Beirut together with other senior Radwan Force commanders. In the days that followed, the Israeli air campaign against infrastructure and command centers expanded. On September 27, Hezbollah’s central headquarters in the Dahiyeh was attacked, and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed.

The pager operation alone did not defeat Hezbollah. But it was the opening blow in a sequence of actions that, within weeks, transformed Hezbollah from an organization that believed it was deterring Israel into an organization trying to save itself.

And here lies the first lesson of September 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 about the need to “preserve deterrence.” But deterrence is not an asset deposited in a bank that earns interest. On the contrary, it erodes through inflation. When a terrorist organization can drive tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes for months without paying a price that shakes its own security doctrine, deterrence gradually disappears.

September 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 accounts by former Mossad personnel, development of the pager project had already begun in 2022. But a state can possess the best intelligence in the world and still lose if its leadership is afraid to turn knowledge into action.

October 7, 2023, taught us the price of a situation in which people know a great deal, warn partially, assess, interpret, debate, and wait. September 17, 2024, reminded us of an older and simpler Zionist-statesmanlike 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 plans of our enemies.

The third lesson is that military success also changes the diplomatic reality.

In Israel, an artificial choice is sometimes presented between “force” and “diplomacy.” But effective diplomacy often comes after the battlefield changes the structure of incentives.

Until September 2024, the main international effort focused on preventing escalation and achieving an arrangement. After the campaign, in November 2024, Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire, to the deployment of the Lebanese Army in the south, and to the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces north of the Litani.

Diplomacy did not replace force. Force created new conditions for diplomacy.

However, the diplomatic impact extended beyond Lebanon.

When the rebels in Syria launched their offensive at the end of November 2024, they encountered an Assad regime whose central pillars had been severely weakened. Hezbollah, which had previously sent its best fighters to Syria to save Bashar al-Assad, was occupied with rebuilding itself after the blows it had suffered from Israel, and on December 8 the Assad regime collapsed. Israel had broken a critical link in the regional system that had protected it.

One of the most important expressions of this change could also be seen in the international arena. After October 7, Israel was perceived as a wounded state, dependent on aid, whose actions could be restricted and which could repeatedly be told what it was not allowed to do. But as Israel proved that it was capable of striking Hezbollah, eliminating its leadership, and changing the regional balance through force, the discourse with Israel also changed. Israel began to be perceived as a regional power capable of shaping reality, whose wishes, capabilities, and red lines had to be taken into account.

The lesson from this is simple: in relations between states, respect is not a substitute for diplomacy. Power is one of the conditions that makes diplomacy from a position of respect rather than weakness possible.

Two years ago, on September 17, 2024, at 3:30 p.m., Israel reminded its enemies of something they had begun to forget: the Jewish state does not merely have the ability to defend itself when attacked. It has the intelligence, sophistication, patience, and power to choose for itself the time, place, and method. And above all, it has the willingness to take the initiative and take its fate into its own hands.