On Monday, Sept. 23, the 300,000 residents of Haifa, Israel, rushed to bomb shelters as oscillating wails of rocket sirens pierced the city for the first time since the outbreak of war 11 months ago. Overhead, bright orange flares from Israel’s Iron Dome defense system streaked across the sky to intercept a barrage of rockets fired from Hezbollah in Lebanon. The assault marked the first time since 2006 that Israel’s northern port city, where I live, has come under attack. Most of the barrage was intercepted, but a direct hit was made at the University of Haifa on top of Mount Carmel.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel on Oct. 8 in solidarity with the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. The northern front has since been a tit-for-tat war, with Iranian-backed Hezbollah rocket barrages (which have displaced over 60,000 Israeli residents) facing off against Israeli Defense Force (IDF) strategic retaliations as part of operation “Northern Arrow.” Tensions have incrementally heightened since August following the IDF strike in Tehran that killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Iran’s threat to fully mobilize Hezbollah militants across Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The prospect of a full-scale ground war is looming on the horizon.
The days preceding the attack on Haifa, however, marked the highest escalation of tensions yet, triggered by a series of covert operations. On Sept. 17, hundreds of pager devices started exploding in the Beirut neighborhood of Dahia, a district controlled by Hezbollah. Largely obsolete in the U.S., the use of pagers (or beepers) is widely used by Iranian proxy terrorist networks for rapid SMS communication and alerts without the GPS tracking common in today’s smartphones. Other Hezbollah stronghold cities throughout Lebanon soon reported the same incident, and chaos erupted as the public became suspicious of anyone using a wireless device.
By the end of the day, Hezbollah forces had shifted tactical communications to handheld radios and walkie-talkies. The following day, while mourning those killed by pagers, the radios and walkie-talkies began detonating, maiming thousands and wreaking havoc in Iranian proxy networks across the region.
Arab news outlets, such as the Saudi State media Al-Hadith, reported a “state of panic in Lebanon” with the hysterical public “trying to get rid of wireless devices.” After two days of freak explosions, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported at least 60 apartment fires, 25 vehicle fires, roughly 4,000 injured personnel, and over 30 dead.
Fingers immediately pointed to Israel, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s, who called the attack “unprecedented.” Israel remained relatively silent while media outlets scrambled to connect the dots between various Taiwanese and Hungarian firms believed to have manufactured the devices and the Iranian Tellerim Company who bought the pagers and distributed them to Hezbollah operatives anywhere from five months to a few days prior to their detonation. A picture soon emerged of Israeli operatives under the Mossad purchasing overseas manufacturing firms and winning a bid to supply Iran with their explosive-outfitted pagers and radios. The devices were intended as part of an elusive future operation but were detonated early based on evidence that Hezbollah leaders found some devices to be suspicious.
As the dust settled from pagers and radios, Channel 12 News in Israel reported an airstrike near Damascus International Airport on Friday, Sept. 20, that eliminated Abu Haider al-Khafaji, a senior member of Hezbollah in Iraq. The following day, Israeli F-35 jets took off from Ramat David Air Base, 12 miles southeast of Haifa, and bombed the apartment of Ibrahim Aqil, commander of the Radwan Forces, in the Beirut neighborhood of Dahia. Local news reported four successive explosions that toppled the building where Aqil was meeting with Palestinian leaders and other Hezbollah officers. As the second-highest-ranking Hezbollah leader, Aqil had a $7 million U.S. bounty on his head for killing U.S. soldiers.
Hezbollah retaliated with major rocket attacks penetrating deep into northern Israel resulting in significant property damage, forest fires, and some injury. In addition to the standard Katyusha and Grad rockets, with 10 to 20 kilogram warheads, the Israel public also faced new Iranian-supplied Fadi 1 and 2 rockets. Several had slipped past the Iron Dome, and their 100 to 150 kilogram warheads made direct hits on houses in Metula on the Lebanese border and the Haifa suburb city of Kyriat Bialik over the weekend.
The IDF responded with continual airstrikes on militant strongholds in northeast Lebanon and rocket launch sites across Baalbeck and the southern Litany and Beqaa regions using gunship helicopters for the first time in the war. Since the weekend alone, over 2,000 munitions have been dropped to hit 1,500 targets in Lebanon. The mission became more sensitive as intelligence located many of the recent rocket launch sites and arms storehouses in residential towns and neighborhood apartment buildings. IDF video footage of precision strikes on select buildings shows multiple secondary explosions after the initial strike, confirming the intelligence of hidden arsenals.
The Monday attack on Haifa, however, did little to slow the Israeli workday or deter resilience. The city center rests on the southern end of the Bay of Haifa, while a high-rise urban sprawl crawls up the slopes of the biblical Mount Carmel where it is believed the prophet Elijah challenged the pagan god Baal before ascending up to heaven in a chariot of fire. The port city is 25 miles from the Lebanese border and the third-largest city in the country after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Haifa is also the proud economic heartbeat of Israel and home to refineries, manufacturing, and a busy seaport that includes the IDF Naval base. The city is also one of the most demographically diverse in the country, historically known as a “mixed city,” with large concentrations of Arab Christians and Muslims, descendants of German Protestants, Druze, and Baha’i mixed harmoniously with the Jewish population.
Despite additional rounds of siren alerts on Tuesday, life in Haifa resumed as normal. The port authority released a statement that “[F]ollowing recent events, we find it necessary to reassure that our ports … are fully open for business and functioning at full capacity.” The statement concluded by boasting that Israeli ports are considered the safest in the world due to multiple layers of security.
Many military and intelligence pundits, however, including analyst Avi Issacharof, believe this is only the start of a possible Third Lebanese War. “Despite a series of severe blows, Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah show no signs of backing down. Instead, the group appears more determined than ever to demonstrate its resilience and capability to strike Israel,” Issacharof stated on Tuesday. As both Hezbollah and Israel are paying lip service to ground invasions and full-scale war, neither side shows signs of backing down.