Reports emerged on 17 September 2024 that, from about 15:45 that day local time, a large number of pagers used by Hezbollah personnel in Lebanon exploded spontaneously and virtually simultaneously. At the time of writing, nine persons are reported to have died and 2,750 persons reportedly suffered injuries.

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Two key questions now need to be considered. First, are these weapons, weapon systems or methods of warfare lawful? The weapon system in the present case will comprise the fake component including the explosive content, the detonator, the arming mechanism and the equipment that is used to generate and transmit the relevant signal. A method of warfare is a way of conducting hostilities. Second, do these attacks comply with targeting law? I consider these questions in turn.

  • OccamsTeapot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    8 hours ago

    Very informative! Basically if I understand correctly: exploding pagers are illegal weapons anyway. But putting that to one side, if all of the targets were “fighters” (and not just Hezbollah in some other political/organizational/whatever capacity) then it might be ok, depending on the details of the targeting law the blog doesn’t cover much. But it seems they also weren’t all fighters sooo…

    Even the targeting thing is debatable because they clearly couldn’t really predict the exact situation at the time, so how could they take the care to avoid civilian casualties?

    • bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      71·
      6 hours ago

      Don’t confuse targeting with who gets hurt at the end. It’s generally not allowed under international law to target civilians. Civilians getting killed when military objectives are targeted are legal. Proportionally and necessity come into play here.

      It can be legal under international law to kill a combatant in his family home together with his whole family, if that prevents a planned attack that would kill another family for example. The target is the combatants not his family.

      Good numbers are hard to come by. However Hezbollah themselves say that their fighters were targeted and reported 3000 exploding pagers. A low number of around a dozen others were injured or killed as well. That’s a ratio of less than 1 civilian per 100 combatants hit. Compare that go Gaza, which has about 2 to 3 civilians per combatant killed.

      • OccamsTeapot@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        5 hours ago

        It’s generally not allowed under international law to target civilians. Civilians getting killed when military objectives are targeted are legal. Proportionally and necessity come into play here.

        This is true but it’s only fine if you target “fighters” according to the blog. So it depends on the details of who these people exactly were, just being in Hezbollah is not enough. As you said it’s whether it’s truly proportional and necessary.

        And for the targeting thing I think the main issue is whether it was possible in this case to control or even minimize the collateral damage. Since you don’t really know the situation you’re setting a bomb off in:

        The targeting law concern will be more likely to centre on whether adequate consideration was given to the incidental injury and damage to be expected from these explosions, given, as is assumed to be the case, that those planning and conducting the operation cannot have known the circumstances that would pertain where each of the large number of explosions took place.

        As you said, don’t confuse targeting with who gets hurt at the end. It didn’t come out too bad (by Israel’s standards at least) but that doesn’t mean they exercised the due care in how they did it, legally.

        Compare that go Gaza, which has about 2 to 3 civilians per combatant killed.

        Would be interested to see where you got those numbers

        • bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
          21·
          5 hours ago

          Would be interested to see where you got those numbers

          About 40,000 killed total in Gaza. 15,000 militants killed. That’s 25,000 civilians killed. These are estimates.

          It will take years until we get good numbers on this.

          • OccamsTeapot@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            5 hours ago

            So a low estimate of deaths (not counting people under the rubble for instance) and Israel’s claim on the number of Hamas dead.

            Absolutely it will take years! So all claims about civilian to militant ratio in Gaza are unreliable and we should probably not make them