They thought the pagers were secure communication devices. Now they know they are not. Hezbollah was maybe planning to escalate its attacks on Israel, without good, secure communications, they probably can’t. On the flip side, if Israel decides to invade Southern Lebanon to escalate things with Hezbollah, Hezbollah is going to have a much tougher time coordinating its defense since its supposed ‘secure’ communication system has just been blown up, the previous system (cell phones) what already suspected of being compromised, and now today, walkie-talkies used by the senior Hezbollah leadership have also exploded.

Alternately this proves that they still are intercepting their communication AND can intervene in their supply chain.

I assure you that basically every nation state in FVEY (and then Israel by proxy) has the ability to intercept your communication.

This is something that ought to be considered as a basic entry level accepted threat.

NOW they know they have to worry about shit blowing up randomly, brand new stuff.

Consider it backwards: Israel sees this attack happening so valuable, that they were willing to forego using the pagers for spying.

Hezbollah has been saying for a while it ‘might’ escalate its actions against Israel. Now… that does not seem as likely.

what exactly was so imminent that this had to happen?

What was so imminent that Hezbollah had to fire that rocket barrage some days ago?

You don’t seem to understand the nature of this conflict

I don’t ascribe to it.

That’s a warcrime

This attack is a warcrime based on treaties that Israel has itself signed to, and has been recognized as such for decades.

First of all, there was no way for Israel to know whether the people they claim to be targeting were combatants when the attack occurred since Israel had no information about the status of these bombs when they chose to detonate them.

Secondly, placing a bomb in a common device that you have every reason to believe will spend much of its time in the proximity of civilians, in homes, markets and other public spaces, and choosing to detonate it without knowledge of the location of the bomb, or it’s proximity to your supposed target, is actively avoiding distinguishing between ‘combatants’ and civilians. I can’t believe that western brain rot requires this to be spelled out for it.

According to this rule, when military medical and religious personnel are members of the armed forces, they are nevertheless considered non-combatants. According to the First Geneva Convention, temporary medical personnel have to be respected and protected as non-combatants only as long as the medical assignment lasts (see commentary to Rule 25).[14] As is the case for civilians (see Rule 6), respect for non-combatants is contingent on their abstaining from taking a direct part in hostilities.

The military manuals of Germany and the United States point out that there can be other non-combatant members of the armed forces besides medical and religious personnel. Germany’s Military Manual explains that “combatants are persons who may take a direct part in hostilities, i.e., participate in the use of a weapon or a weapon-system in an indispensable function”, and specifies, therefore, that “persons who are members of the armed forces but do not have any combat mission, such as judges, government officials and blue-collar workers, are non-combatants”.[15] The US Naval Handbook states that “civil defense personnel and members of the armed forces who have acquired civil defense status” are non-combatants, in addition to medical and religious personnel.[16]

Non-combatant members of the armed forces are not to be confused, however, with civilians accompanying armed forces who are not members of the armed forces by definition.[17]

• Rule 3. Definition of Combatants - ICRC

Now you are getting it! War is bad!