Experts Say Israel's 'Booby-Trap' Attacks in Lebanon Violate International Law

Experts from the United Nations and human rights groups said that the device attacks in Lebanon, which killed at least 37 people Tuesday and Wednesday while injuring 2,900, violated international law due to their indiscriminate nature and could constitute a war crime.

The surprise attacks have been widely attributed to Israel, including by unnamed U.S. officials. They came in two waves. On Tuesday afternoon local time, thousands of pagers exploded, killing 12 people, including four children, and injuring 2,300. On Wednesday, another 25 people were killed and 600 injured by the explosion of other communications devices, including walkie-talkies and smartphones. Many of the explosions occurred in supermarkets and other public spaces around Lebanon, leaving civilians maimed.

"These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time," a group of more than a dozen U.N. legal experts said in a statement on Thursday, including Ben Saul, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism.

The U.N. experts called the attacks "a terrifying violation of international law."

Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, also denounced the attacks in a statement on Wednesday, calling them "shocking, and their impact on civilians unacceptable," and saying that "the fear and terror unleashed" was "profound."

"Simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location, and their surroundings at the time of the attack, violates international human rights law and, to the extent applicable, international humanitarian law," Türk added.

Israel hasn't confirmed or denied responsibility for the device attacks but has indicated that it's shifting its military focus to the north as tensions mount with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group and political party in Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded airstrikes and rocket fire for the last 11 months, leaving many hundreds dead, mostly on the Lebanese side, but until now both sides have avoided an escalation that led to full-scale war. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Thursday that the attacks were a "declaration of war" and Israel had crossed "all red lines."

Al Jazeerareported Wednesday that "Israel's supporters have celebrated the explosions in Lebanon, describing them as 'precise,' but the blasts went off around civilians—at funerals and in residential buildings, grocery stores, and barber shops, among other places."

The attacks' victims included a 9-year-old girl who had just that day finished her first day of fourth grade, as well as an 11-year-old boy and at least two other children. Some of the Wednesday explosions took place at funerals for those killed in the first wave. The explosions have led to panic regarding devices in the country.

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), told Al Jazeera "this is exactly why booby-traps of ordinary civilian objects are illegal—because not only do they cause physical harm and injury, they cause psychological and emotional harm."

Whitson, who previously worked at Human Rights Watch, called the attacks "inherently indiscriminate"—violating international humanitarian law designed to protect civilians—and a "deliberate decision on the part of Israel" to create chaos.

Huwaida Arraf, a U.S.-based human rights lawyer, agreed with Whitson, telling Al Jazeera that the coordinated attack "meets the textbook definition of state terrorism."

The experts cited a 1996 U.N. treaty that forbids the use of "booby-traps" on devices associated with civilian use.

Experts said that even if Israel sought to kill Hezbollah military operatives—the devices that exploded had been ordered by Hezbollah—there was no way it could have precisely targeted them with such attacks. Many Lebanese work for Hezbollah in non-combatant roles.

Luigi Daniele, an expert in international humanitarian law at Nottingham Trent University, toldAnadolu Agency that targeting non-combatants is a violation of international humanitarian law, as written in Article 8(2)(b)(i) of the Rome Statute. Like other experts, Daniele also cited the more general issue of detonating explosives in public places, which carries foreseeable impact on civilians that can violate Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the statute.

Saul, the U.N. rapporteur, said that being a Hezbollah accountant shouldn't make someone a target for assassination.

"The crux of the problem is it is absolutely impossible to know who would be in possession of so many pagers at the time they were detonated," he said, adding that the devices could have been passed on to loved ones.

Lama Fakih, the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, agreed that the attacks were "unlawfully indiscriminate" and called for an independent investigation, in a statement issued Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) herself called for a congressional investigation, including into whether U.S. played a role in the attack. Members of the Biden administration have so far said relatively little publicly about the attacks.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued a sharply-worded condemnation of the attacks on Thursday.

"What we see is a genocidal state that is completely out of control and supported by a Western world that is, in large measure, too racist and Islamophobic to care," the nonprofit group wrote on social media.

The Tuesday pager attacks also extended into Syria, where 14 people were injured.