Did exploding pagers break international law?

The attack on Hezbollah’s communications network has enormously damaged the group, but was the attack, believed to be by Israel, legal under international law?

The Middle East is once again on the brink of all-out war, with the Israeli government heralding new battle plans have been confirmed for southernLebanon.

In response, Hezbollah leadership is vowing to inflict a “just punishment” on Israel and the intensifying rocket fire and air bombardments in the region’s stronghold appears to herald a new phase in the almost year-long Gaza conflict.

What happened?

Over two days across Lebanon this week, thousands of personal communication devices exploded targeting members of the armed group Hezbollah.

On day one, 3,000 pagers detonated remotely. On day two, thousands of two-way radios or walkie-talkies exploded, with reports that even laptops and solar power systems had blown up in parts of Beirut.

So far, 37 people have been killed, thousands more injured, and the Middle East is once again hurtling into another historic moment.

Lebanon’s health minister said an eight-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy were killed in the pager attacks, with most of the thousands wounded in the capital Beirut.

More than 25 people have been reported dead so far in the two-way radio blasts, with 450 wounded.

Who is responsible?

At this stage, it’s widely believed that Israel carried out the attacks. Israeli officials have not officially confirmed this.

Reuters news agency reported that Israel’s secretive Eight two, zero-zero cyber warfare unit was involved in planning the attack.  US media reported that Israel’s security agencies have briefed allies over its involvement.

The manufacturers of both the walkie-talkies and the pagers claim they had nothing to do with the operation.

How was it done? 

It’s been suggested  Israeli intelligence discovered that  Hezbollah planned to update approximately 5,000 old pagers. The project was completed around five months ago.

The Japanese two-way radio company ICOM says it discontinued the model believed to be used in the second attack more than a decade ago.

Golden Apollo, the Taiwanese company which made the pagers, claimed it licensed its product to a Hungarian company to fulfil the order, which in turn claimed the order was filled by a Bulgarian company.

It’s believed Israeli intelligence managed to intercept the order.

Sources told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone “undetected” by Hezbollah for months.

When it was suspected that the plan had been compromised, a coded message was sent to the pagers. That message triggered the devices to detonate. Around 3,000 of the 5,000 exploded.

The next day, thousands of handheld two-way radios exploded. Reports indicate that these tools were intended to be used in any war between Israel and Lebanon.

Some explosions were witnessed as people attended funerals for those who died in the preceding day’s attacks.

A Reuters reporter in the southern suburbs of Beirut claimed to see Hezbollah members taking batteries out of any walkie-talkies that had not exploded, tossing the parts in metal barrels.

Is this a breach of international law?

Questions have been raised over the legality of the attack and if it is justifiable under international law.

There are further nuances to this conversation considering Hezbollah is not a nation state, but a paramilitary group which, although funded and supported by Iran, is merely a part of wider Lebanese society.

Speaking to 360info’s podcast Leave It to the Experts, Tamer Morris from the University of Sydney agrees that international law is complicated and nuanced, but certain principles must be committed to by all parties.

“In an international armed conflict, you’re only allowed to target people who are directly participating in hostilities,” Dr Morris said.

He said since Hezbollah is a non-state group “as long as someone is part of that group in a combatant function, then they’re allowed to be targeted technically”.

“The question is, we don’t know if these pagers or the walkie-talkies were only given to people in Hezbollah who are combatants,” he said.

“There might be someone who’s medical, there’s someone who’s an accountant. And so if they are being targeted, that would technically be illegal.

“We have to make sure that all new weapons don’t exceed the level of suffering that we expect. Undue suffering is the phrase we use now.

“If they targeted people who are not part of the combatant function of Hezbollah, then technically, that is a violation of law.

“They also have to make sure that all the weapons they use can discriminate between these objects, which is a military object and a civilian object.

“If whoever let these off was using surveillance in the areas and made sure that all these precautions were taken and that civilian loss and damage was minimised, then they haven’t breached the law.

“But again, the videos that we’ve watched look like they went off at random. And they all went off together rather than individually being monitored.

“These kinds of weapons are now indiscriminate because they go off at random.

“For example … we can’t be certain that the pager can’t be in someone’s car or that someone handed the pager to their child. Because of that, the weapon now becomes indiscriminate. “

Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abia told CNN  the “vast majority” of those injured were civilians, unrelated to the group’s battle with Israel.

What happens next?

It’s worth remembering that Israel has not officially confirmed it was behind the attack.

However, the situation is evolving rapidly, and Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas in Gaza increasingly appears to be taking a backseat to the developments in Lebanon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a brief statement on Thursday, reaffirming his new war goals, which include the return of displaced communities in the border regions with Lebanon.

Following this, Israeli military infrastructure began to move in much larger numbers toward the Lebanese border shifting away from Gaza.

The US is concerned about Israel commencing a ground war in Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah says the pager attack “crossed all red lines” and vowed to inflict a “just punishment” on Israel.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.