In peacetime, police and other law authorities are restricted to using lethal force only in cases in which a life is immediately in danger. Carefully dismantling a device, adding explosives and sending them on to be used in homes or places of worship, for example, cannot be seen to be saving a life immediately.
And it is peacetime law that applies in Lebanon at this time. There is, under international law, no war currently taking place in Lebanon. Israel is involved in armed conflict hostilities in Gaza, not Lebanon. The intermittent attacks across the Lebanon-Israel border do not constitute hostilities as defined under international law.
Growing list of violations
Even if hostilities were occurring between Israel and Lebanon, as might well happen, Israel would have no right to use booby traps. In hostilities, an adversary’s fighters may be intentionally targeted and killed. Ambushes and other clandestine operations are permitted. And the lives of civilians may be lost in doing so.
But weaponizing an object used by civilians is strictly prohibited in wartime. It is a form of “killing treacherously,” meaning with deception. It is the opposite of carrying weapons openly, as required by the venerable treaty, the Hague Convention Annex of 1907, which is still binding law for all engaged in warfare.
Despite being clearly illegal for over a hundred years, the use of booby traps persists. During the terrorist violence that plagued Northern Ireland for decades, the anti-British Irish Republican Army deployed booby traps, in particular car bombs. Members of the group were regularly prosecuted under UK law. Members of the United States military would be prosecuted too if they decided to create and use a booby trap.
The use of booby traps adds to Israel’s growing list of post-Oct. 7 violations of international law. The country itself was the victim of a brutal criminal act by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. And international law permits significant, robust responses to such a crime. But it also sets strict conditions and limits, and it clearly holds that the use of booby traps goes beyond those limits.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, Professor of Law and International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.