By Mary Ellen O’Connell
The operation that used pagers and walkie-talkies to kill members of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was ingenious – but was it legal?
Certainly, there are those who will argue that it was. That thinking goes like this: Hezbollah has been attacking Israel with rockets, and the pagers and radios purchased by Hezbollah could be expected to be used by the same people involved in decisions to send those missiles. As such, the killings, if carried out by Israel as is widely believed, would appear to be targeted and warranted. While some bystanders may die or be injured, they would likely be associated with Hezbollah, according to this line of thinking.
But that is not the right assessment, according to international law. Under law I have taught for over 40 years, hiding explosives in everyday objects makes them booby traps – and in almost every case, using a booby trap designed to kill is a crime.
Prohibited means of warfare
It is important to affirm that the acts that apparently led Israel to strike Hezbollah are also illegal under international law. In fact, Hezbollah, a nonstate armed group supported by Iran, has no right to use violence of any kind, let alone missile strikes targeting civilians in northern Israel.
Under international law, a nonstate actor gains the right to fight only if it is associated with a regular armed force of a sovereign state involved in armed conflict hostilities. And that is not the case with Hezbollah in Lebanon. This means each Hezbollah missile constitutes the commission of a serious crime.
But that fact does not give rise to any right of Israel to use booby traps in response.
A booby trap is defined by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the body charged with oversight and implementation of the Geneva Conventions and related treaties on the law of armed conflict, as a “harmless portable object” – but redesigned to contain explosive material. They are a prohibited means of warfare and are equally prohibited by law enforcement authorities.
In peacetime, police and other law authorities are restricted to using lethal force only in cases in which a life is immediately in danger. Carefully dismantling a device, adding explosives and sending them on to be used in homes or places of worship, for example, cannot be seen to be saving a life immediately.
And it is peacetime law that applies in Lebanon at this time. There is, under international law, no war currently taking place in Lebanon. Israel is involved in armed conflict hostilities in Gaza, not Lebanon. The intermittent attacks across the Lebanon-Israel border do not constitute hostilities as defined under international law.
Growing list of violations
Even if hostilities were occurring between Israel and Lebanon, as might well happen, Israel would have no right to use booby traps. In hostilities, an adversary’s fighters may be intentionally targeted and killed. Ambushes and other clandestine operations are permitted. And the lives of civilians may be lost in doing so.
But weaponizing an object used by civilians is strictly prohibited in wartime. It is a form of “killing treacherously,” meaning with deception. It is the opposite of carrying weapons openly, as required by the venerable treaty the Hague Convention Annex of 1907 – which is still binding law for all engaged in warfare.
Despite being clearly illegal for over a hundred years, the use of booby traps persists. During the terrorist violence that plagued Northern Ireland for decades, the anti-British Irish Republican Army deployed booby traps, in particular car bombs. Members of the group were regularly prosecuted under U.K. law. Members of the United States military would be prosecuted too if they decided to create and use a booby trap.
The use of booby traps adds to Israel’s growing list of post-Oct. 7 violations of international law. The country itself was the victim of a brutal criminal act by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. And international law permits significant, robust responses to such a crime. But it also sets strict conditions and limits – and it clearly holds that the use of booby traps goes beyond those limits.
Mary Ellen O’Connell is Professor of Law and International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
JW says
The US must rethink its unwavering military support for Israel. We should focus on adult diplomacy (if we pretend to be a democracy). That is the only way to end the war as history has demonstrated over and over again.
Something is rotten in the State of Israel (and we can argues in the Disunited States of America as well)
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
They murdered at least 12 people including 2 kids. Imagine being ok with this. Imagine being ok with a political party that gives money to the government that did this.
JC says
Hezbollah would have no problem raping/killing the author of the article. Hezbollah is the cancer of Lebanon that must be destroyed. In my opinion Hezbollah with their masters being Iran being nothing but destruction to the local group of people. Lebanon and Syria IMO are much better off without Iran’s influence.
Pierre Tristam says
JC is correct in two regards. Hezbollah would have no problem killing the author under certain circumstances, and Lebanon would be better off without Iran’s influence (up to a point, considering the dollars Iran is willing to spend on Lebanon’s poorer Shiites’ social services, as even the Lebanese government, bigoted as it remains against Shiites, is not). But if the author were in Lebanon, her chances of being murdered by Israeli ordnance–made in the United States to boot–are about 20 times likelier than being killed by Hezbollah (for that matter, JC is likelier to be killed by a murderer or a mass shooter or an idiot with a gun in Florida than if JC were in Lebanon and risking death by Hezbollah), while Israel’s violations of Lebanese sovereignty, compared to Hezbollah’s against Israel, are about double that. In the race for international lawbreaking, war crimes and atrocities, Israel is the indomitable champion.
JC says
Something is rotten also when you are dealing with groups who want to destroy the State of Israel and the murdering of the Jews. This means Hamas, Islamic Jihad, ISIS, Hezbollah, and all the other groups that’s being backed by Iran. Only way to have real adult diplomacy is to first have these groups stop their mission of destroying the State of Israel and the killing of the Jews. This is also the same for the ultra right wing Israelis in government who also see all Arab/Muslims as the enemy.
PaulT says
Thank you for adding perspective Pierre, it’s refreshing to read a reasoned view of Israeli government culpability when all of the media in this country seems so deeply in the thrall of AIPAC that they fear any criticism of Israel’s policies will be dubbed antisemitic.
Justsayin says
This would not be a debate if Ukraine did this to Russia. Hell, they want the U.S to give long range missiles now. World War 3 is not far away!
Kennan says
Not that it matters to anybody, but I do applaud the feedback by others because we need to change our tune in the Middle East, and we need to do it quick.
The take we need to have in Gaza as well as *Now Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East is one of much more nuance and understanding. resistance militias like Hezzballah and Hamas were created by us in our support of an apartheid nation, born out of the Ethnic cleansing and displacement of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948. I under no circumstances, support terrorism and terroristic acts, but one has to wonder what we would do under such Dire Straits. 76 years of subjugation 57 years Of occupation. Living in a concentration, camp being supported by The United States and born of tenuous Bible passages that suggest The Jews are the chosen people to rule this land. This is all done on the coat tails of a horrific holocaust that the Jews suffered themselves. What a hypocritical shame.
Now we find ourselves supporting a genocidal holocaust of the 21st century with no guard rails. No Geneva convention, no rules, an extreme right wing leader in Netanyahu lighting the entire Middle East on fire to stay out of jail.
Keep your eye on the ball people and follow the breadcrumbs because they are leading to a very, very bad place. Not only have Palestinians suffered to the highest extent possible, more children have been killed than men and women. that is a fact. Now the expansion of an almost certain regional war that the United States could stop at any moment is looming.
Benjamin Netanyahu is laughing at us. He has dictated his own geopolitical aspirations through us. Through an American delivery system of weapons, money tax dollars and no questions.
I don’t know about you, but my heart is broken, my head, spinning, and Humanity thrown away.
Layla says
JW, First, we are not a democracy, we are a republic and there is a very big difference in the two.
Someone needs to tell Hamas that there is a price to pay for terrorism. Israel is our ally and that is not going to change.
Pierre Tristam says
Oh, Layla Layla Layla: when are you going to abandon that Birch Society talking point about republic/democracy? We all know the shtick, yeah, democracy is when all the togas got together and did democracy in that never-existing pit in Athens, while a republic is representative yadayadayada. It’s meaningless, we all know that for the last 250 years or so democracy has meant what we commonly mean as the system we live with, let’s just move on and not use dog whistles that try to re-legitimize the suppression of as many voters as possible. As for Hamas, sure, tell them there’s a price to pay. But I wish you’d tell Israel there was a price to pay for its terrorism, which out-blasts Hamas’s by immeasurable magnitudes–actually, not immeasurable: where are we now, 40,000 dead? That’s approaching twice the death toll in Dresden, which was also American bombs as I recall, with an assist from the RAF. You’re right: Israel is our ally. So is Saudi Arabia, by the way, so is Pakistan. We have this habit of picking some pretty putrid allies. That’s not going to change. Finally, stop picking a different comment handle every time you comment. It’s against policy, and makes people think you represent a… more democratic mass than you actually do.
Ray W says
Hello Layla. This will be easy for you to understand.
Are you telling FlaglerLive readers that when we vote on constitutional amendments this fall (pot or abortion, for example) we are not engaging in a direct democratic act by the people in the messy debauched Athenian pit that is Florida politics? That voting on a referendum son proposed gas taxes isn’t a democratic act?
As I am fond of saying, we are a liberal democratic Constitutional republic. Get used to the idea, Layla. You aren’t just wrong, you are wronger than wrong.
Pogo says
@President Trump thanks all for their thoughts and prayers
Pass the ketchup.
DaleL says
Pierre, you bring up Dresden, WWII. WWII, the Holocaust resulted in over 6,000,000 murdered Jews. Over 70,000,000 people died in WWII. I am very troubled by Israel’s recent tactic against Hezbollah. On one hand it was a targeted attack, unlike the brutality in Gaza. On the other, as Professor O’Connell wrote, it was/is a clear war crime.
Because of the Holocaust, there are fewer Jews now than in 1938. Hezbollah and Hamas have chosen over and over to make war on the civilians of Israel.
As for America’s “allies, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It does result in having some pretty unsavory allies.
William Tecumseh Sherman, September 1864: “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it….”
LT C says
The Middle East villains will never learn. YOU DON’T SCREW WITH ISRAEL! They will protect themselves when encroached on. And, they are ruthless!
Kennan says
Yup, they are ruthless. You don’t fight terrorism within industrial terrorism. A little like having the Oathkeepers, The Proud Boys, maybe the Arean Nation and KKK kill a bunch of folks because they didn’t like the way the election went. Then bring in the US military, find out they’re hiding and say…. New Jersey, and say let’s get those bastards and just blow up New Jersey!
I really don’t know why I bother to hold anybody’s hand through this, but the hateful rhetoric some of you morons are pushing is disgusting.
Let’s see what happens if Israel starts a regional war that we get involved with and American boys and girls are killed for nothing over Netanyahu’s maniacal asperations. Going to be a little harder to pass the catch up then Pogo.
DaleL says
Kennan, you failed to mention the ethnic cleansing of 820,000 Jewish refugees from Muslim (Arab) countries between 1948 and 1972. More than 200,000 found refuge in Europe and North America. 586,000 were resettled in Israel. The rest to other countries around the world. The majority of the Jewish refugees left their homes penniless and destitute and with nothing more than the shirts on their backs. The Arab governments provided no compensation and confiscated their possessions.
Judea existed long before Muslims drove out the Christian Byzantines in the sixth century.
Pogo says
@As stated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpdt7omPoa0
“Impotent hatred is the most horrible of all emotions; one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Kennan says
Well there’s a lot of resentment to go around. I’ll grant you that, but very hard to dictate behavior of people who dealt with the “Nakba” of 48 when 750,000 were literally kicked off their land in less than a week.
As far as Judea is concerned in 6th century….. More religious based distraction. I’m not gonna lie I hate organized religion of any kind. It more resembles organized crime both then and today. Honestly who cares? That doesn’t give them the right to displace and subjugate from 48 til now!
With that kind of logic we should just give all of Ancient Romes former territories back to modern day Italy.
Kennan says
No hatred here Pogo.
Can’t say the same for LT C though.
DaleL says
I am not disputing or excusing the horrible acts by Israel. I am pointing out that war crimes and ethnic cleansing was far from one sided.
Perhaps one of the most heinous plans was “Operation Cast Thy Bread” by the Haganah and later the Israel Defense Forces. It began in April 1948, during the 1948 Palestine war. They contaminated Palestinian drinking wells with typhoid bacteria. Bacterial contamination of wells was relatively common and easy to treat (chlorination of the well). As a result the plan did not achieve the crippling effects its advocates had hoped for, and was discontinued by December 1948.
As in my earlier comment, in which I referenced a quote from General Sherman, war is cruelty. If there is a Hell, those who promote war should go there, forthwith.
Kennan says
Agreed Dale.
I often wonder how much of a real war this is. I struggle with that. I do however appreciate your insight.
Don miller says
The author failed to condemn nor assail the Iraqis. Taliban, hamas and viet cong for use of deceptive explosive devices by a non-nation state. Why? The Israelis don’t have to told there is a price to pay,, they already paid it over history. They don’t need permission to react preemptively to protect themselves by any means necessary