Does intl. law allow electronic devices to be weaponized?

There is still much uncertainty around the multiple explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon this week. What we know so far is that at least 37 people were killed, more than 3,000 injured and that the war between Israel and militias in Lebanon has escalated once again.

Pagers are radio devices used by the Islamist group Hezbollah— considered a terrorist organization by the EU, the United States and other governments — because, unlike cellphones, they cannot be geolocated. 

In Taiwan, the prosecutor's office has launched an investigation into the company that manufactured the devices, following a report in The New York Times that the Israeli secret service planted small explosives in pagers ordered by Hezbollah.

How did the explosive get into the pagers?

So far, the Israeli government has made no comment on the explosions, nor has it claimed responsibility for the attacks. Confusing and contradictory reports continue to circulate, including some indicating that a company in Bulgaria was also involved in manufacturing the exploding pagers — a claim that has been denied by the Bulgarian authorities.

Helmut Aust, professor of international law at the Free University of Berlin, said the attacks are very difficult to assess.

"In international law, you must first determine the nature of the conflict," he told DW. "Is it an international or a non-international armed conflict? And despite the cross-border nature in this instance, it's not entirely clear. International armed conflict is a conflict between the armed forces of two states. [...] Hezbollah is not the armed force of Lebanon."

Israel asserts its right to self-defense

Since October 7 last year, when the Islamist group Hamas launched major attacks from the Gaza Strip, Israel has repeatedly asserted its right to self-defense. But does Israel's right to self-defense extend to attacks against Hezbollah, an organization that is backed by Iran?

"In international law, the right to self-defense assumes you are defending yourself against an armed attack, and that the attack is ongoing," said Aust. "Of course, Hezbollah is firing rockets into Israeli territory. But for a long time there have also been Israeli military operations in Lebanon. It's difficult to pinpoint when exactly the current conflict began. Many things remain unclear in the fog of war."

Nonetheless, Aust stressed that international humanitarian law prohibits so-called "indiscriminate attacks." "Attacks are also prohibited if they can be expected to result in civilian casualties and injuries at a level disproportionate to the anticipated military advantage," he explained.

'Hezbollah combatants are still legitimate military targets'

This could indeed apply in the case of the pagers and walkie-talkies — Lebanon's Health Ministry has said children were also killed and injured in the explosions. Stefan Talmon, professor of international law at the University of Bonn, also said a key principle of international law is that military strikes must target combatants, and must do so as precisely as possible.

"Hezbollah combatants are still legitimate military targets when they are not on the battlefield, even when they retreat to their barracks or sleeping quarters," Talmon told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on Wednesday. 

Marco Sassoli, a professor of international law at the University of Geneva, holds a similar view. "From the perspective of humanitarian international law, the key question is whether the people killed were legitimate targets," he told the Swiss radio station SRF. "These would be either combatants in an armed conflict or an armed group. Those who fulfill an ongoing combat function may be attacked. And I believe Israel can argue that it is engaged in an armed conflict with Hezbollah."

Aust also drew attention to another provision of international law: "There are specific rules in international law that cover weapons like these," he said. "They derive from Protocol II of the 1996 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Israel is also bound by this protocol. It contains a provision prohibiting the use of booby traps that consist of apparently harmless movable objects specifically designed and built to contain explosives. The pagers and walkie-talkies could certainly fall under this definition."

Aust is well aware that warnings about violations of international law are not likely to deter Israel, Hamas or Hezbollah from resorting to increasingly extreme forms of warfare. Nonetheless, he insisted that it's important to have international regulations, even if they are repeatedly and grossly violated.

"We can't expect international law to perform miracles," he said. "If Israel's actions are defined as violations of international law, it's not going to make the government change its behavior. But there is value simply in maintaining legal standards. Were we to abandon this altogether, we would have even fewer tools with which to establish relatively objective criteria for how countries should conduct themselves at war."

As things stand, he concluded, international partners can at least refer to international law as a way of exerting pressure on warring parties, to get them to moderate their actions.

This article was originally written in German.

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