STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We begin with news from Lebanon. Israel's military says it has launched what it's labeling a targeted attack near Beirut. According to a news agency, an explosion struck an area in the southern suburbs. This comes at the end of a week during which pagers and handheld radios carried by the militant and political group Hezbollah were turned into little bombs.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
They blew up in grocery stores, public streets and people's homes. The explosions killed at least 37 people, including a 9-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy, and wounded thousands. Privately, Israel told the U.S. it was behind the explosions, according to NPR's reporting. But did the attacks violate international law? That's the question we have today, and we're talking about this with Brian Finucane. He's a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group and a former legal adviser to the State Department. Welcome to the program. Good morning.
BRIAN FINUCANE: Good morning.
FADEL: So these attacks may have been targeting Hezbollah, but they went off in places where civilians were going about their daily lives. So my question is, what are the rules when enemies are at war? Did this violate international law?
FINUCANE: Well, as you say, Hezbollah and Israel are at war, as we say colloquially - or more technically, in armed conflict - at least since last October...
FADEL: Yeah.
FINUCANE: ...When Hezbollah began attacking Israeli forces. As such, the law of armed conflict, the law of war, imposes certain restrictions on targeting, conduct of hostilities. These include prohibitions on the targeting of civilians, prohibitions on indiscriminate attacks, requirements that the parties to the conflict - both parties - take feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians, and also requirements that the attacking parties take into consideration proportionality when launching the attacks. In addition, Israel is party to certain treaties that regulate or prohibit specific weapons.
And the most relevant treaty here is an international agreement called the Amended Protocol II, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which contains a specific prohibition on the use of booby traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed or constructed to contain explosive material. And all the information that we've been obtaining since these attacks implicate Israel in these attacks, and also suggests that these attacks violate this prohibition on the use of booby traps or other devices in this fashion.
FADEL: Right. And Israel, Lebanon and the U.S. are all party to this protocol. Is that the only place where you see an apparent violation? I mean, you listed a few requirements there.
FINUCANE: So that is the most obvious one. And I say that because these other prohibitions and regulations under the law of war, with respect to targeting and the kind of hostilities, tend to be very fact specific in the analysis. So right now, it's very difficult to know whether and to what extent Israel targeted the distribution of these devices. Were they limited to fighters in Hezbollah? Were they distributed more widely within the organization? Were they distributed to civilians in the general population? It's also very difficult to know what Israel officials who launched the attack knew about the locations of people carrying these pagers, if anything. But the information we do have very strongly suggests a violation of this weapons prohibition.
FADEL: Now, is there any time that this would be legitimate when parties are in conflict, booby trapping communication devices of the enemy?
FINUCANE: So the issue is not so much booby trapping communications devices. It's the specific rule here. And this was a rule that was negotiated looking backwards in part to actions by the Axis powers in the second world war, which involved the mass production of apparently harmless objects, but which were in fact explosive.
FADEL: What should - just in the few seconds we have left, how should international actors be reacting to these attacks? We heard deep alarm from the secretary-general of the U.N. The U.S. called on parties to deescalate.
FINUCANE: Well, that needs to be the priority. Avoiding further bloodshed needs to be the priority. And the U.S. government needs to use its leverage with Israel to finally bring about a Gaza cease-fire, which would hopefully calm tensions in the north with Hezbollah and in the wider region, and hopefully get the return of the hostages from Gaza.
FADEL: Brian Finucane is a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group and a former legal adviser to the State Department. Thank you for your time.
FINUCANE: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
