just to update you on what we are covering by way of breaking news this hour dozens of members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah appear to have been uh simultaneously targeted um by their Pages being remotely detonated we don't know the full extent of their injuries we don't know the full scale of the number of people that may have been killed as a result of that but what we do know is that Hezbollah has described this as a major security breach big questions of about now uh what Israel's potential next move is although the Israeli
leadership has remained mostly tight lipped on it several shocked Witnesses though have been warning others in Lebanon of course to get rid of their Pages after this incident the pager devices that we have been using all of them are exploding in the guys we have more than 40 injured all are going to the hospital we don't have room anymore in the hospitals there's more than 400 men here their Pages exploded the ones they use for communication these are Big assassinations big assassinations okay staying with this story let's speak to Ramy kurri who's a distinguished fellow
at the American University of Beirut he joins us now from Boston and New York welcome to the program so I'm sure you've been following all of this with a a huge amount of concern and curiosity as well I mean the backdrop politically is that the isra government has said it's adding returning security to Northern Israel as its quote fourth goal to the war the Assumption was that something may be in the pipeline but did anyone ever experience that an attack would come in the way that it has done this is highly unusual and and really
troubling for Hezbollah uh and and for all of its allies and the um axis of resistance uh because it means that the Israelis have uh capabilities in intelligence and uh attacks of this nature uh far beyond what people had assumed and that the security precautions that hisbah and others take clearly are not sufficient um whether this is due to intelligence sources in Lebanon who help do this or cyber attacks we we'll have to find out uh but this is this is the most dangerous event I think that hisbah has faced in in years uh to
simultaneously hit apparently hundreds of uh of of pages uh it also knocks out the uh immediate capability of communicating they probably have backup systems of course but uh so it's possible that this is the beginning of a larger campaign the Israelis have talked about removing the threat of hisbah for the last 9 10 months it's a huge issue for them much more serious uh than Hamas is uh and therefore it's no surprise that they've rat did it up now gone uh one level higher they're also at a high level of confidence in the Americans and
and British and Western support that they're getting they feel they can do anything they want and the West will support them um no matter how um how bad it is or uh whatever um so this is something that the Israelis have talked about and and clearly there is tension within Israel between the government and and the Armed Forces about this between the people who are demonstrating in the streets um and this shifts the focus a little bit from Gaza uh to the Lebanese Israel situation it the the reply of hisbah is going to be really
important to watch and healah doesn't necessarily reply immediately we'll have to give it a few days we'll see what they say and what they do is going to be important but they're obviously much more focused in Lebanon on restoring their Communications capabilities and finding out how this happened it's very very interesting isn't it how Israel has apparently calibrated this attack on Hezbollah we're talking about attack that may have been having spoken to a military and security analyst earlier may have been many many months if not years in the making but now is the time that
they decided to put this uh into action it is not an attack that is based upon heavy Weaponry as we're seeing in Gaza it relies on something of a slow burn on a huge amount of data and planning yes and this is a sign of where the military confrontation is moving uh when you see the an the htis in Yemen firing um high-speed missiles that can reach Tel Aviv which they did the other day without being detected and you see this kind of attack and the hisbah drones that flew over Northern Israel a couple of
months ago and took a lot of video so the the nature of the confrontation is really moving into technical capabilities as well as sheer armor and power and courage uh on on the ground um and this is something that um I'm sure people are working on all over the region now trying to figure this out but the Israelis have always had a uh very big Edge in technical uh you know digital um um cyber cyber world stuff they're very good at it um but healah has been equally good over the years in defending itself so
we we we'll this is a turning point I think in this confrontation uh and it'll either push both sides into a larger war or it'll push everybody to retreating from the brink and trying to figure out if they can restore the um situation in the Israel Lebanon border to one that's more manageable for both sides or if it'll erupt into something uh uh much bigger my my my position has always been that we would not get a big Regional War but we have to wait and see uh Ramy let me ask you about the timing
of all of this because um it hasn't gone unnoticed that Amos Hawkin the US Envoy has been uh in in the region his key message has been one of restraint hasn't it nevertheless this appears to have been largely ignored that's right and this is a this is par for the course uh the Israelis routinely not only neglect what the Americans tell them but you know throw mud in their face I mean they've often for instance uh expanded announced a major settlement expansion when the American president visits Israel uh and things of that nature so this
is no surprise the Americans have very limited capabilities in terms of their diplomatic um action um they focus more on Military Support for Israel and sanctions against isra 's foes um and now they're trying to focus on Saudi Israeli normalization um but the American diplomatic efforts are not taken very seriously by most people in the region which is a shame because the US should be a huge diplomatic actor but it is clearly on the side of Israel and everything it does U has to fit into the priorities of Israel so hin being ignored is no
surprise in fact it's kind of routine okay Ramy cury good to hear your thoughts and Analysis Ramy cury the distinguished fellow at the American University of Beirut be sure to subscribe to our channel to get the latest news from Al jaer
