Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed that the infamous “beeper operation” that occurred last September could have been conducted just days after the October 7 massacre, directly contradicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s on Thursday.
“On October 11, terrorists had thousands of beepers,” he wrote on X/Twitter. “If we had conducted the operation back then, the beepers would have been secondary to the communication device explosions, which would have eliminated thousands of Hezbollah terrorists.”
Gallant claimed that by waiting over a year, the majority of communication devices were already in storage, and their explosion did not cause damage.
Netanyahu appeared on Channel 14 to refute the claims, saying that it had been necessary to wait.
“If we had activated the operation then, at most, 150 beepers would have exploded – compared to thousands of beepers that reached Hezbollah by the time we actually activated it,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu did not want to start a war with Hezbollah
Furthermore, Netanyahu said he believed that attacking Hezbollah days after the October 7 massacre would be a “grave mistake.”
“After we suffered the massacre by Hamas, if we were to get sucked into a war on two fronts, we would have drowned. I felt it was better to deal with Hamas before heading north,” he said.
The public dispute between the two came following exclusive reports from The Jerusalem Post stating that had it happened after the October 7 massacre, the beeper operation could have killed 15,000 Hezbollah fighters all in one fell swoop and potentially ended the war before it fully began.
However, sources also told the Post that if the walkie-talkies had been activated on October 11, 2023, they would not have had anywhere near the maximum impact hoped for under the specific existing circumstances.
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