LONDON: The mass pager attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon has turned the spotlight on Israel’s secretive Unit 8200, the Israel Defence Forces’ intelligence unit, which a Western security source said was involved in planning the operation.

Israeli officials have remained silent on the audacious intelligence operation that killed 12 people on Tuesday and wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives, and at least one person was killed on Wednesday when hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated.

One Western security source said that Unit 8200, a military unit that is not part of the spy agency, was involved in the development stage of the operation against Hezbollah which was over a year in the making.

The source said Unit 8200 was involved in the technical side of testing how they could insert explosive material within the manufacturing process.

The Israeli military declined to comment. The prime minister’s office that has oversight of Mossad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Yossi Kuperwasser, a former military intelligence official and now research director at the Israel Defence and Security Forum, said there was no confirmation that the military intelligence unit was involved in the attack.

But he said 8200’s members were some of the best and brightest personnel in the Israeli military, serving in a unit at the centre of Israel’s defence capabilities.

“The challenges they are facing are immense, very demanding, and we need the best people to get involved in that,” he said.

The unit — and its legion of young, hand-picked soldiers — develops and operates intelligence gathering tools and is often likened to the US National Security Agency.

In a rare public statement about the unit’s activities, the IDF said in 2018 that it had helped to thwart an air attack by Islamic State on a Western country.

At the time, it said the unit’s operations ran from intelligence gathering and cyber defence to “technological attacks and strikes.”

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2024