Yeah, that's what I read too. It's a smart way to force the weaponized pagers into the hands of your enemies.

Also sort of shows the attack wasn't too sophisticated. Mossad might not even have compromised the cell phones, they just fed bad intelligence to whoever and they had a likely supplier already compromised.

In all - it doesn't look too good for any intelligence personnel in Hezbollah.

besides the direct deaths and injuries, this attack also targeted lines of communication and trust

Exactly. The psychological impact of this attack should not be underestimated.

It will have Hamas' leadership and operatives second guessing so many of the mundane things that they interact with on a daily basis.

Im more surprised that Hezbollah issues them. I'd thought pagers were cheap enough as consumer items that they'd just give their guy a wad of cash and say go pick up such and such pager for me.

Would have at least severely hampered any precision from man-in-the-middle attacks on supply lines such as these. Especially when being embedded within a civilian city.