Hezbollah pagers attack cost Israel about $322 million

In an interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz published on Sunday, Gil Pinchas, a recently retired financial adviser to the Israeli army, said that the 2024 pager attack against Hezbollah cost about $322 million.

Dozens of people were killed, including two children, and almost 3,000 were wounded when Israel blew up Hezbollah members' pagers and radio devices simultaneously on Sep. 17 and 18, 2024, a few days before the conflict between both sides turned into a war

Asked if the price includes the walkie-talkies detonations, Pinchas said: "Everything cost 1 billion shekels [$322 million]. All inclusive. But it's a long investment. It didn't begin during the war."

A little less than two months after the attack, Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, acknowledged that Israel was behind the coordinated explosions, specifying that this operation, like the assassination of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in late September, was carried out by Mossad with his green light, despite the opposition of senior security officials and some ministers. In December 2024, two former Mossad agents revealed on CBS News' 60 Minutes how Hezbollah had been duped into buying thousands of booby-trapped walkie-talkies and pagers, without realizing they had been made in Israel.

Pinchas also said in the interview that Israel's airstrikes during the June 2025 war with Iran cost 20 billion shekels (about $ 6.4 billion dollars)

He added these costs are not the leading consideration in the decision whether to launch one operation or another, but "it's important because the government has to prepare for it."

He added that in 2024, the Israeli Defense Ministry invested over 1.2 billion shekels (around $ 386 million) in 300 startups, without specifying their nature. "That comes from the defense budget and in the end it gives you the product for a future war. Not every startup succeeds, but in the end you need this surprise," he added.

In an article published last month, Haaretz estimated that Nasrallah's assassination on Sept. 27, 2024, cost Israel $34 million. This operation marked the early days of a major Israeli offensive against Hezbollah, which was interrupted by a cease-fire reached at the end of November 2024.