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The Hezbollah leader stressed that "the only way" to peace "is by stopping the aggression in Gaza and the West Bank" and "not escalation" or "all-out war."
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday accused Israel of having "violated all red lines" by killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands more in surprise bombings of pagers, walkie-talkies, and other devices across Lebanon, calling the audacious attack "an act of war" that will not go unpunished.
In a televised speech during which Israeli warplanes flew over the Lebanese capital of Beirut, Nasrallah condemned the attack as "a major terrorist operation, an act of genocide, and a massacre," adding that it "amounts to a declaration of war."
"The enemy used a civilian method used by a large segment of society and did so again on Wednesday by blowing up wireless devices without caring who was carrying them," the chief of the Iran-backed political and paramilitary group said.
Numerous figures including United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres decried the weaponization of civilian objects.
"There is no doubt that we have been exposed to a major security and humanitarian blow, unprecedented in the history of the resistance in Lebanon," Nasrallah conceded.
⚡️⭕️[ENGLISH] Hezbollah secretary general Sayed Hassan Nasrallah speech commenting on Israel's Cyber Terror Operation live stream https://t.co/011jOGgYpp
— Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) September 19, 2024
Lebanon's Ministry of Health said that in addition to killing at least 37 people—including two children, ages 9 and 11—the bombings, which occurred in two waves on Tuesday and Wednesday, wounded around 3,500 others, 287 of them critically.
While Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attacks, media reports cited Israeli and U.S. officials who attributed the bombings to Israeli military and intelligence operatives.
Nasrallah said that Hezbollah has received "messages through official and unofficial channels saying that the aim of the strike was to stop supporting Gaza."
"Our answer is, in the name of the martyrs and the wounded, that the Lebanon front will not stop until the aggression against Gaza stops, regardless of the sacrifices," he added.
Hezbollah—whose arsenal and military capabilities dwarf those of the Lebanese armed forces or Hamas—launched limited but destructive attacks on northern Israel the day after the October 7 assault on Israel led by its Palestinian ally Hamas. Since then, Hezbollah and Israel have traded cross-border fire that has killed dozens of people and displaced tens of thousands more.
On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel's war—which has killed or wounded more than 146,000 Palestinians in the besieged enclave and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case—has entered a "new phase" focused on Lebanon.
"The center of gravity is shifting to the north through the diversion of forces and resources," said Gallant, who along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and multiple Hamas leaders faces the prospect of a possible International Criminal Court arrest warrant.
The Israeli remote attack has fueled fears of a wider war and prompted warnings against further escalation.
On Wednesday, Jordan's Foreign Ministry accused Israel of bringing the region to the "brink of war," which would likely involve Iran, whose leaders have yet to publicly retaliate for the July assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Israel also assassinated Hamas deputy political chief Saleh Arouri in a drone strike in Beirut earlier this year.
Some critics contended that Israel is seeking a wider war. Ronen Bergman, an Israeli expert on targeted assassinations, told Britain's Channel 4 News Wednesday that if his country is behind the Lebanon operation, it is "trying to signal to Hezbollah" that it "is ready for escalation."
Addressing the prospect of a regional war, Nasrallah said during his speech that "the only way" to peace "is by stopping the aggression in Gaza and the West Bank."
"Not escalation," he added. "Not all-out war."
"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."
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.
Widespread pager explosions across #Lebanon & in #Syria yesterday are shocking and their impact on civilians unacceptable.
@volker_turk urges against further widening of current conflicts & calls for those responsible for such an attack to be held to account.
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) September 18, 2024
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 Jazeera reported 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, told Anadolu 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.
"The UNSC is failing people living in conflict, with Russia and the United States particularly responsible for abusing their veto power," said Oxfam.
As the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance worldwide has skyrocketed by 150% over the last decade, five powerful countries on the United Nations Security Council have had hundreds of opportunities to vote for progress in some of the world's most protracted conflicts—but in dozens of cases, countries including the United States and Russia have instead vetoed peace and security resolutions.
In its report, Vetoing Humanity, Oxfam International pointed Thursday to numerous vetoes made by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC), or the P5, which the humanitarian group said have placed their own economic and political interests ahead of the council's mission.
The group examined 23 of the world's longest violent conflicts, including those in the occupied Palestinian territories, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen, which have collectively been the subjects of 454 resolutions passed by the UNSC since 2014.
But 30 resolutions have been vetoed by one of more of the P5 countries, including eight out of 12 regarding Palestine and Israel, 15 out of 53 on Syria, and 4 out of 7 on Ukraine.
"The UNSC is failing people living in conflict, with Russia and the United States particularly responsible for abusing their veto power," said Oxfam, noting that the two countries have together cast 75% of the 88 vetoes at the UNSC since 1989, with China casting the rest.
The other two permanent members, the United Kingdom and France, have not used their veto power since 1989, but they have still joined the other powerful countries in undermining global peace and security, said Oxfam.
In addition to veto power, the P5 has "pen-holding" privileges at the UNSC, allowing them to lead negotiations and decide how resolutions are drafted or whether they are ignored.
"The erratic and self-interested behavior of UNSC members has contributed to an explosion of humanitarian needs that is now outpacing humanitarian organizations' ability to respond. This demands a fundamental change of our international security architecture at the very top."
The P5 members have "deliberately cherry-picked which conflicts to address in the Council," reads the report. "Over the last decade, over 95% of the resolutions that the UNSC passed relate to just half of the protracted crises, leaving the other half mostly neglected."
France, the U.K., and the U.S. have held the pen on two-thirds of protracted crises over the last decade, allowing them to direct negotiations. For example, the U.K. has pen-holding privileges in talks on Yemen, "where it has interests due to historical colonial links and the strategic desire to maintain maritime routes."
The United States' use of its veto power at the UNSC has come under particular scrutiny in the past year, as it has vetoed three resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave and blocking humanitarian aid to its 2.3 million people, pushing the population toward famine. It has also vetoed proposals to grant U.N. membership to Palestine, despite the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) voting in favor, 138-9.
"While the UNGA has passed at least 77 resolutions over the last decade supporting Palestinian self-determination and human rights and an end to Israel's illegal occupation, the U.S. has used its veto power six times to block resolutions perceived as unfavorable to its ally Israel," said Oxfam. "The U.S. vetoes have created a permissive environment for Israel to expand illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory with impunity."
P5 vetoes have "more often than not," said Oxfam executive director Amitabh Behar, "contradicted the will of the U.N. General Assembly, in which all states are represented."
The report details other vetoes by the P5, including a 2023 veto by Russia of a nine-month extension of cross-border assistance to northern Syria‚ a decision that left 4.1 million people with little or no access to food, water, or medicine. Russia has also vetoed several resolutions on the country's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, despite the fact that the U.N. Charter states that "a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting."
"China, France, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. took responsibility for global security at the UNSC in what is now a bygone colonial age," said Behar. "The contradictions of their acting as judge and jury of their own military alliances, interests, and adventures are incompatible with a world seeking peace and justice for all."
While the P5 ostensibly helped form the UNSC with the aim of promoting and maintaining global peace and security, the report notes that "they are providing more resources in the form of military aid than they are in humanitarian assistance," with its assistance being used not just defensively by recipients but also helping "to fuel and perpetuate the conflicts that the UNSC is failing to prevent and resolve."
"In 2019, the USA provided three times as much security assistance as humanitarian aid: $18.8 billion versus $6 billion," reads the report. "China pledged $20 million a year in military aid grants to Africa over 2015–17, whereas its worldwide humanitarian assistance in 2016 totaled less than $21 million."
"Not only have the P5 governments repeatedly failed to act to avert conflict, many have profited from wars by directly selling weapons to warring parties despite violations of international humanitarian law and the human suffering resulting from these wars," the report continues.
Behar said that "the erratic and self-interested behavior of UNSC members has contributed to an explosion of humanitarian needs that is now outpacing humanitarian organizations' ability to respond. This demands a fundamental change of our international security architecture at the very top."
The report comes as the U.N. prepares for the Summit of the Future, scheduled to kick off next week with the aim of envisioning "a revitalized U.N."
Oxfam made several recommendations to end the P5's ability to undermine the mission of UNSC, calling on member states to:
"We need a new vision for a U.N. system that meets its original ambitions and made fit for purpose for today's reality," Behar said. "A Council that works for the global majority, not a powerful few."
"This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions," said one campaigner.
A trio of human rights groups on Wednesday announced a new interactive initiative exposing what the coalition is calling a "Genocide Gentry" of weapons company executives and board members and "54 museums, cultural organizations, universities, and colleges that currently host these individuals on their boards or in other prominent roles."
The coalition—which consists of the Adalah Justice Project, LittleSis, and Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE)—published a map and database detailing the "educational and cultural ties to board members of six defense corporations" amid Israel's ongoing annihilation of Gaza, for which the U.S.-backed country is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
" Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza and nearly 200 cultural heritage sites since October 2023, using bombs and weapons manufactured by the companies included in the Genocide Gentry research," the coalition said. "As of April, these attacks have killed more than 5,479 students and 261 teachers and destroyed or critically damaged nearly 90% of all school buildings in Gaza."
"Universities across the country including the likes of Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Southern California, and New York University have remained largely silent on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza," the groups added. "Behind closed doors, these same universities are hosting executives and board members of the companies manufacturing the weapons used in these attacks as board members, trustees, and fellows."
Members of the Genocide Gentry include:
"Students on university campuses across the country have not only been demanding divestment, but transparency," said Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project. "Transparency about their institutions' investments, partnerships, donors, and decision-makers, and their connections to individuals and companies directly enabling and profiting off war and genocide."
"This research helps provide some of this transparency by illuminating just how embedded the interests of the weapons industry are within our institutions, so we can begin chipping away at the power and influence that they wield," she added.
ACRE campaign director Ramah Kudaimi noted that "as part of its genocide since October 2023, Israel has targeted universities and cultural centers across Gaza, destroying campuses, museums, libraries, and more."
"That this is all backed by the United States means U.S. educational and cultural institutions have a responsibility to consider what their role is in helping end these war crimes, and that starts with reconsidering their connections with the weapons companies profiting from the destruction," Kudaimi said.
Munira Lokhandwala, director of the Tech and Training program at LittleSis, said: "This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions. Through this research, we show how the defense industry shapes and influences our civic and cultural institutions, and as a result, their silence around war and genocide."
"We must ask our institutions: What role are you playing in whitewashing war and destruction by inviting those who profit from manufacturing weapons onto your boards and into your galas?" she added.