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Calls for Safety of Beirut Airport under Threat of Israel Strikes

Smoke rises in Beirut's southern suburbs after a strike, near Rafik Hariri International Airport, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Hadath, Lebanon, October 8, 2024. (Reuters)
Smoke rises in Beirut's southern suburbs after a strike, near Rafik Hariri International Airport, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Hadath, Lebanon, October 8, 2024. (Reuters)
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Calls for Safety of Beirut Airport under Threat of Israel Strikes

Smoke rises in Beirut's southern suburbs after a strike, near Rafik Hariri International Airport, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Hadath, Lebanon, October 8, 2024. (Reuters)
Smoke rises in Beirut's southern suburbs after a strike, near Rafik Hariri International Airport, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Hadath, Lebanon, October 8, 2024. (Reuters)

As Israeli strikes devastate Lebanon, calls to safeguard the country's only airport -- a lifeline for aid and travel located precariously close to Hezbollah's southern Beirut stronghold -- have gained urgency.

Since Israel intensified its air campaign against Hezbollah last month, Beirut's airport has received a flurry of aid shipments from various countries, most recently France and Qatar.

It has also served as a major evacuation hub for foreign nationals and Lebanese citizens fleeing Israel's deadly campaign, despite most airlines suspending services over security concerns as strikes land nearby.

The airport was previously targeted in 2006, during Israel's last war with Hezbollah, prompting concern over a repeat as Israel threatened to unleash destruction on Lebanon similar to Gaza, where it has been fighting a devastating year-long war.

UN and Arab officials have called for the protection of the facility, warning that an attack would disrupt the critical flow of international assistance.

The airport is essentially "the only passage for humanitarian aid", said Qatar's Minister of State for International Cooperation Lolwah Al-Khater who flew in on Tuesday as black plumes billowed into the skyline.

It should be safeguarded as "an absolute necessity", she said, a day after Israel's closest ally the United States warned Israel not to bomb the facility or roads leading to it.

-'Relies on imports'-

On Tuesday, vehicles revved beneath the racket of idling military aircraft engines on the ramp at the Beirut airport as crews unloaded two aid planes.

The humanitarian supplies, bearing the French flag or stamped with "Qatar Aid", contained medicine, medical equipment and tents.

The airport should be protected and treated as "a humanitarian corridor", Al-Khater told reporters during a Beirut news conference as she announced a humanitarian "air bridge" for Lebanon from Qatar.

Lebanon's transport minister Ali Hamieh told AFP Beirut has received "assurances" that Israel will not target the airport, but added "there is a big difference between assurances and guarantees".

He spoke days after the Israeli army said it struck Hezbollah targets near the Masnaa border crossing, damaging the main road between Lebanon and Syria and preventing vehicles from getting through.

"It's important that the airport remains open. It's absolutely critical the ports remain open. And it's also critical that the overland corridors into Lebanon remain open," said Lebanon director of the World Food Program (WFP) Matthew Hollingworth.

"This is a country that relies on imports to cover most, if not all, of its needs, in terms of fuel, in terms of food," he told a briefing.

Jeremy Laurence, spokesman for the UN Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, stressed the "paramount importance of international humanitarian law", saying "all parties must respect not only civilians but civilian objects".

More than 1,150 people have been killed since Israel ramped up air strikes on Lebanon on September 23, according to official figures.

The fighting has forced more than one million people to flee their homes, with many heading to Beirut, which is now overwhelmed.

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Former Israeli Spies Describe Attack Using Exploding Electronic Devices against Lebanon’s Hezbollah

An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
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Former Israeli Spies Describe Attack Using Exploding Electronic Devices against Lebanon’s Hezbollah

An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)

Two recently retired senior Israeli intelligence agents shared new details about a deadly clandestine operation years in the making that targeted Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Syria using exploding pagers and walkie talkies three months ago.
Hezbollah began striking Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war, The Associated Press said.
The agents spoke with CBS “60 Minutes” in a segment aired Sunday night. They wore masks and spoke with altered voices to hide their identities.
One agent said the operation started 10 years ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah didn't realize it was buying from Israel, its enemy. The walkie-talkies were not detonated until September, a day after booby-trapped pagers were set off.
“We created a pretend world,” said the officer, who went by the name “Michael.”
Phase two of the plan, using the booby-trapped pagers, kicked in in 2022 after Israel's Mossad intelligence agency learned Hezbollah had been buying pagers from a Taiwan-based company, the second officer said.
The pagers had to be made slightly larger to accommodate the explosives hidden inside. They were tested on dummies multiple times to find the right amount of explosive that would hurt only the Hezbollah fighter and not anyone else in close proximity.
Mossad also tested numerous ring tones to find one that sounded urgent enough to make someone pull the pager out of their pocket.
The second agent, who went by the name “Gabriel,” said it took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the heftier pager, in part by using false ads on YouTube promoting the devices as dustproof, waterproof, providing a long battery life and more.
He described the use of shell companies, including one based in Hungary, to dupe the Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo, into unknowingly partnering with the Mossad.
Hezbollah also was unaware it was working with Israel.
Gabriel compared the ruse to a 1998 psychological film about a man who has no clue that he is living in a false world and his family and friends are actors paid to keep up the illusion.
“When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” Gabriel said. “We make like ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scene. In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher including businessman, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.”
By September, Hezbollah militants had 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
Israel triggered the attack on Sept. 17, when pagers all over Lebanon started beeping. The devices would explode even if the person failed to push the buttons to read an incoming encrypted message.
The next day, Mossad activated the walkie-talkies, some of which exploded at funerals for some of the approximately 30 people who were killed in the pager attacks.
Gabriel said the goal was more about sending a message than actually killing Hezbollah fighters.
“If he just died, so he’s dead. But if he’s wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts,” he said. “And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of ‘don’t mess with us.’ They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.”
In the days after the attack, Israel's air force hit targets across Lebanon, killing thousands. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.
By November, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a byproduct of the deadly attack by Hamas group in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, ended with a ceasefire. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas militants, health officials have said.
The agent using the name “Michael” said that the day after the pager explosions, people in Lebanon were afraid to turn on their air conditioners out of fear that they would explode, too.
“There is real fear,” he said.
Asked if that was intentional, he said, “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use the pagers again because we already did that. We’ve already moved on to the next thing. And they’ll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is.”