Did Middle East device attack violate international law? Advocates want an investigation

[September 21, 2024]  By JAMEY KEATEN and KAREEM CHEHAYEB

GENEVA (AP) — Human rights advocates are calling for an independent investigation into the deadly explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon and Syria, suggesting the blasts may have violated international law if the devices were fashioned as booby traps.

The explosions that have been widely blamed on Israel killed at least 37 people and wounded more than 3,000, including many members of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement.

The United Nations human rights office and some advocacy groups have cried foul, arguing that the strikes were “indiscriminate” because it's nearly impossible to know who was holding the devices, or where they were, when they went off. But some academics insist the explosions were precisely focused because the devices had been distributed to Hezbollah members.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which aims to help protect civilians and other noncombatants in conflict and aims to stay neutral, said: “This was a unique operation, and it will take time to have all the facts to establish a legal opinion."

The committee declined to comment publicly about whether the operation violated international humanitarian law, which is difficult to enforce and sometimes flouted by countries.

International law has never addressed the targeting of communication devices that people carry on their bodies. The Geneva Conventions, which provide a rule book for the protection of civilians during conflict, were adopted 75 years ago, long before pagers, mobile phones and walkie-talkies were in widespread public use. The legal situation is further complicated by the fact that Hezbollah is an armed nonstate group acting inside Lebanon, a sovereign member of the U.N.

“There must be an independent, thorough and transparent investigation as to the circumstances of these mass explosions, and those who ordered and carried out such an attack must be held to account,” the U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, said in a statement.

Did devices amount to booby traps?
The question of how to apply international rules to the attack seems to center mostly on whether a secret explosive embedded in a personal electronic device might be considered a booby trap. Israel has been blamed for targeted strikes and assassinations in the past, but a large strike using mobile communication devices is virtually unheard of.

A booby trap is defined as “any device designed or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object,” according to Article 7 of a 1996 adaptation of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which Israel has adopted.

The protocol prohibits booby traps "or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”

Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said the rules were designed to protect civilians and avoid “the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today.” She too called for an impartial investigation.

The convention also sets rules for the use of land mines, remnants of cluster bombs and other explosives. It bars use of other “manually emplaced munitions,” such as improvised explosive devices that "are designed to kill or injure, and which are actuated manually, by remote control or automatically after a lapse of time.”

The pagers were used by members of Hezbollah, but there was no guarantee that the members would be holding the devices when they went off. Many of the casualties were among members of Hezbollah's extensive civilian operations mainly serving Lebanon’s Shiite community.

Laurie Blank, a professor at Emory Law School in Atlanta who specializes in international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict, said the law of war doesn’t prohibit use of booby traps outright, but places limits on them. She said she believed the attack was “most likely lawful under international law.”

She said booby traps can be used to target enemy forces in or near a military objective, including the communication systems used by Hezbollah fighters.

This video grab, shows a walkie-talkie that was exploded inside a house, in Baalbek, east Lebanon, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo)

“That said, it’s not clear that this is a booby-trap scenario. For example, if the attack is attacking the pagers themselves, then it’s not an issue of booby-trapping,” Blank wrote in an email.

Did ‘indiscriminate' nature of attack make it illegal?
Experts said the pager explosions suggested a long-planned and carefully crafted operation, possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.

“There is no world in which the explosion of hundreds, if not thousands, of pagers is not an indiscriminate attack prohibited by international law,” Mai El-Sadany, who heads the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, a Washington-based think tank, wrote on X.

“The pager holders were scattered across civilian areas, from shopping malls to crowded streets and apartment buildings to hospitals, surrounded by women, children and men,” she told The Associated Press. “An attack like this cannot anticipate what innocent passerby is in the impact area or what carefree child picks up the pager when it beeps.”

British lawyer Geoffrey Nice, who prosecuted former Yugoslav and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, said in an interview: “It’s pretty obvious here it’s a war crime. And we should call it out for what it is."

But he noted criminal conduct on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict, alluding to rocket strikes by Hamas militants on Israel and casualties caused by Israel's military operation in Gaza, where the Health Ministry says at least 41,000 people have been killed since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the latest war.

Rules require countries to ‘minimize’ harm
Amos Guiora, a professor at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, said the strikes were “justified in the context of self-defense,” but he acknowledged the risks of collateral damage against civilians.

“International law does not articulate a number as to what is legitimate or illegitimate collateral damage, it’s just to ‘minimize.’ The tragic reality of collateral damage is that innocent people will be harmed and killed," he said. “I do have a sense on this one that there was a conscious effort to minimize it — with the understanding it will be never perfect.”

“This particular attack strikes me — whoever did it — is as pinpointed as pinpointed can be," said Guiora, who spent 20 years in the Israeli military and advised its commanders in Gaza in the 1990s.

Israel has already faced heavy international criticism over its military response in Gaza and, more recently, in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

Back in May, the top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Hamas leaders behind the attacks, over their actions in the war.

Israel ignored an order from the U.N.’s top court to halt its military offensive in southern Gaza after South Africa accused Israel of genocide. Russia, too, has ignored the court’s call for it to end its invasion of Ukraine.

Hamas has also been investigated. Human Rights Watch released a report in July that concluded Hamas-led armed groups committed numerous war crimes during the attacks in Israel.

Hezbollah has been linked to numerous indiscriminate attacks on civilians over the years, including in Argentina, Bulgaria and, of course, Israel.
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Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Danica Kirka and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

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