A booby trap is defined as “any device designed or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object,” according to Article 7 of a 1996 adaptation of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which Israel has adopted. The protocol prohibits booby traps “or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”
The prohibition is presumably intended to make it less likely that a civilian or other uninvolved person will get injured or killed by one of these seemingly harmless objects. If you’re booby-trapping military equipment or military facilities then that’s not a problem, civilians wouldn’t be using those.
When you are a paramilitary organization, the line between what is military equipment and what isn’t gets quite blurry. Especially when they weren’t really “boobytrapped”, they were turned into remote explosives and did nothing until explicitly triggered.
It’s complicated, but this might be considered a war crime. A key quote from the article:
The prohibition is presumably intended to make it less likely that a civilian or other uninvolved person will get injured or killed by one of these seemingly harmless objects. If you’re booby-trapping military equipment or military facilities then that’s not a problem, civilians wouldn’t be using those.
When you are a paramilitary organization, the line between what is military equipment and what isn’t gets quite blurry. Especially when they weren’t really “boobytrapped”, they were turned into remote explosives and did nothing until explicitly triggered.
If this isn’t a military battle then that makes Israel’s actions look even worse.
They were triggered indiscriminately. Israel had no way of knowing who was holding each pager or where it was located when it went off.