Daily Times

After an extraordinary two-stage attack involving thousands of walkie-talkies and pagers–injuring thousands of people and killing at least 37–rocked Lebanon this week, countries like Hungary, Bulgaria, Taiwan and Japan have garnered attention over links to Israel’s declaration of a new phase of war in the Middle East.

Alleged reports of home solar energy systems blowing up in Beirut considerably added to the frenzy. At the same time, evidence suggests how this was not an overnight operation but a meticulously planned decades-old supply-chain interdiction, using trading companies as fronts for Israeli intelligence to send Trojan horses Hezbullah’s way.

There’s no denying the political implications as missiles continue to be dropped from both sides. While humanitarian organisations plead for restraint, fears of a devastating regional conflict persist, especially in the wake of Friday’s airstrike that claimed Hezbullah’s top commander, Ibrahim Aqil. All this might serve as a painful wake-up call for Lebanon as a state whose sovereignty has become a non-affair in the eyes of the Israeli military busy violating international laws in its quest to change the existing balance of deterrence.

Still, the technical aspects of how Israel weaponised an object used by civilians are even more terrifying. Could it be that by executing this new type of terrorism, the Netanyahu administration has cautioned the entire world about how it could use its high-tech sabotage to kill and maim a population indiscriminately? What else could be expected from a country, which had as early as 1948, resorted to biological warfare by turning water–a fundamental necessity for human sustenance–as an extremely effective weapon against Palestinians in the ethnic cleansing campaign?

Israeli Defence Minister may not have claimed the act as his own but praising his country’s security agencies gives a chilling warning to those who seek to normalise trade tries with Tel Aviv: who in their right mind would willingly expose their country’s civilians, women and children to potential ticking time bombs?

With deadly toxins in food items, carcinogen-laced beauty products, re-engineered pharmaceuticals and remotely triggered explosives in electronics, there are a million tricks to target entire populations in the blink of an eye. From the looks of it, the new, evolving and terrifyingly lethal model in Israel’s military strategy is here to stay as it treats whoever dares stand with the Gazans as its ultimate enemy. No ifs and no buts. *