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Last week, Israel staged two waves of attacks via wireless electronic devices in Lebanon. On Sept. 17, hundreds of pagers distributed to Hezbollah operatives emitted a series of beeps, then exploded, killing at least a dozen people and wounding an estimated 2,700 more. The next day, walkie-talkies also exploded around Lebanon, killing another 20 people and wounding hundreds more. Many of those harmed were not part of Hezbollah. Four of the dead were children.
Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, has publicly denied that the country was behind the attacks. However, defense officials confirmed to my Times colleagues Sheera Frenkel, Ronen Bergman and Hwaida Saad that Israel was responsible.
Since the explosions, a fierce debate has raged about whether the attacks violated international law. Much of that argument has centered on targeting decisions: whether Israel took sufficient care to attack only members of Hezbollah who were engaged in combat operations, (the only group within Hezbollah that could legally be targeted at home), and whether Israel complied with the law on proportionality by weighing the likely civilian harm of each detonation against the likely military advantage. (Marko Milanovic, a law professor who is also an adviser to the International Criminal Court, has written a useful explainer of some of those issues.)
I’m going to focus on a different legal issue: a 1996 United Nations treaty that specifically bans explosive devices that have been manufactured to look like “apparently harmless” portable items. Israel signed it 24 years ago.
Mines, booby traps and other devices
The treaty in question is the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby Traps and Other Devices, usually referred to as “Protocol II,” because it’s an addition to the 1980 United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
The treaty language is helpfully clear. Article 7(2) states, in its entirety:
“It is prohibited to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”
Such devices were banned because they posed a particularly serious danger to the civilian population, U.S. secretary of state Warren Christopher wrote in a memo to President Clinton in 1996, recommending that the United States join the treaty.
