The terror of pager bombs

Two dimensions of a future scenario emerge after the present Israeli war on Hezbollah in Lebanon by using aerial attacks and triggering explosions on pagers and walkie talkie sets. One is whether this violates international law. The other is a cold analysis whether Israel’s predatory mass explosion of pagers has established a new and dangerous future template which other countries could adapt later.

Israel’s step of hiding explosives in pagers and walkie talkie sets could also be copied to blow up aircraft and vehicles are the fears being expressed even by the country’s American supporters. One conservative US think tank wondered, immediately after the pager blasts, whether this action could be replicated on cell phones or other electronic equipment in common use.

There is no doubt that the entire communication system of Hezbollah through pager-WT system was destroyed which the group had nurtured for so long to prevent the detection of communication by Israeli agencies. There were two waves of massive explosions of pagers and walkie talkie sets in Lebanon. These massive explosions have caused several civilian deaths. As this is written, the casualties in the sudden explosion of pagers and walkie talkie sets on September 17-18 in Lebanon and Syria are 32 deaths including children. Thousands are reported injured.

Although Israel has not officially claimed responsibility, defence minister Yoav Gallant publicly revealed that Israel was “entering a new phase of war”. Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi also warned that they were capable of many more surprises as “we are already two stages ahead... We will make it so that terrorists will be afraid of going to the toilet and even eating food”.

American National Public Radio (NPR) disclosed on September 20 that an official not authorised to speak publicly told them that Israel had notified Washington after the explosions claiming responsibility “for Tuesday’s attacks”. Quoting legal experts, NPR added that Israel was responsible for violating international law signed by Israel and Lebanon.

This is because UN had added Article 7(2) in 1996 to the Amended UN Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons on the use of conventional weapons. Under that amendment, there is a ban on “booby traps” hidden in devices which “civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use” and which strike “military targets and civilians without distinction”.

Experience indicates that Israel will not be swayed by allegations of human rights violations by UN bodies or US Congressmen. It was only on 17 September that UN General Assembly had overwhelmingly adopted a non-binding resolution drafted by Palestine demanding Israel end "its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory" within 12 months.

Israel also ignored the July 2024 order of International Court of Justice (ICJ) asking it to stop settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and end its "illegal" occupation of those areas and the Gaza Strip as soon as possible. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had then said the court had made a "decision of lies".

Israeli bombing last Friday (Sep.20), after Hezbollah’s rocket barrage in the wake of mass pager explosion, killed Ibrahim Aqil. The Hezbollah chief was reportedly killed in an air strike in suburban Beirut during a meeting of the Lebanese militant group’s Radwan unit. Aqil also known as Al-Hajj Abdul Khader was the chief of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force.

Aqil was involved in two bombing of US targets in Lebanon in the 1980s. In 1983, he reportedly organised two major explosions: One on 18 April 1983 outside the US embassy in Beirut which killed over 100 people including 17 Americans. The second was on 23 October 1983 against multi-national forces. After the “Beirut barracks bombing” the then US President, Ronald Reagan, withdrew the American presence from Lebanon.

A study of the history of terrorism would reveal that the present Israeli action of triggering pager-walkie talkie explosions might be the first predatory step by any State compared to the usual practice of action or over-reaction like US invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11. Starting with the first suicide bombing in history in 1881 by “Narodnaya Volya”, the organisation, which killed Tsar Alexander II in St. Petersburg, to the modern day, no State has triggered such an attack, with such serious ramifications.

The same goes with the assassinations of Lord Cavendish (British Chief Secretary in Ireland) in 1882, French President Carnot in 1894, Spanish PM Antonio Canovas in 1897 and King Umberto of Italy in 1900.

Could America have pre-empted 9/11 if their agencies had taken Ramzi Yousef’s warning seriously in 1995? Yousef, who drove an explosive laden van into the basement of New York World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, and exploded it to bring it down, causing six deaths, was arrested from Pakistan in 1995 and airlifted to New York where FBI officer Lewis Schiliro received him.

From the airport while he was being ferried to Manhattan to his jail, an FBI officer taunted him, pointing out the World Trade Center building still standing to which Yousef calmly replied: “It would not have been, had we had more money."

The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat. Views are personal. (Syndicate: The Billion Press)

By: Vappala Balachandran