Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has challenged Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s statement that carrying out an attack on Hezbollah in October 2023, as Gallant had proposed, would have been “a horrible mistake.”
In a post on X, Gallant also rejects Netanyahu’s claim that there were only about 150 booby-trapped beepers in Hezbollah’s possession by October 2023, “as opposed to thousands that we accumulated” in the months leading up to the September 2024 pager attack.
“The pager operation was prepared years before the war and was ready for activation on October 11,” Gallant writes. “Contrary to what was said, thousands of pagers were in the hands of the terrorists by the time I suggested attacking Hezbollah.”
He argues that if the operation had been initiated in October 2023, the damage caused by the pager explosions would have been less significant compared to the destruction caused by the walkie-talkie devices, which were also rigged with explosives.
Gallant further points out that while dozens of Hezbollah operatives were killed and thousands injured during the September 16-17 pager and walkie-talkie attacks, the pager explosions incapacitated far more operatives than the walkie-talkie blasts. He explains on X that by September 2024, “the vast majority of walkie-talkies were in warehouses, and their explosion caused no damage.”

{Matzav.com}