New details about a tense incident that occurred prior to Israel’s execution of the “exploding pagers” operation were reported by Kan News this week. The report said that during one of the operations conducted by an elite unit of the IDF in the months leading up to the ground war in Lebanon, the soldiers seized various materials and equipment from a Hezbollah facility and brought it back to Israel Among the equipment was a pager – which was transferred to the Mossad. When Israel unexpectedly realized that they would have to carry out the pager operation earlier than they planned because Hezbollah had begun to express suspicions about them, one security official remembered that one pager had been brought into Israel. A frantic search for the pager began that lasted several hours as officials tried to track it down. After a thorough investigation, they discovered that the Mossad had neutralized the device as soon as they received it. Only then was the order given to detonate the pagers. Prime Minister  Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday officially confirmed that Israel carried out the pager operation. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)