Two UN experts on Tuesday condemned Israel's alleged killings of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri and six others last week in Lebanon, which they said "would amount to extrajudicial killings and crimes of murder."
The experts also deplored threats they said were made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials to kill Hamas leaders anywhere in the world.
"All states are prohibited from arbitrarily depriving individuals of their right to life in military or security operations abroad, including when countering terrorism," said the experts, Ben Saul, UN special rapporteur on human rights while countering terrorism, and Morris Tidball-Binz, special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
"Killings in foreign territory are arbitrary when they are not authorized under international law. Israel was not exercising self-defense because it presented no evidence that the victims were committing an armed attack on Israel from Lebanese territory."
They also emphasized that Lebanon has the duty to prevent the use of its territory to prepare terrorist acts against Israeli civilians and to investigate, arrest, and prosecute or extradite suspects involved in terrorism in Lebanon or Israel.
"Other states, including Iran and Syria, have obligations not to support any terrorist preparations in Lebanon or Palestine directed against Israeli civilians," said the experts.
The experts noted that Israel has neither provided any legal justification for the strike nor reported it to the Security Council, as Article 51 of the United Nations Charter requires.
"Any legitimate legal justification for Israel's military operations against Hamas in Gaza, in response to the 7 October attack on Israel emanating from Gaza, does not extend to authorizing strikes in Lebanon or other countries," said the experts.
"There is no legal basis for geographically unlimited attacks against members of an armed group wherever they are."
The experts warned that Israel's strike constituted a dangerous regional escalation of the Gaza conflict, a violation of Lebanon's sovereignty, and a prohibited use of military force against Lebanese territory contrary to Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.
They said the UN Security Council, General Assembly, and Human Rights Council have repeatedly declared that states must respect international law in countering terrorism.
"Israel has a deplorable history of assassinating suspected terrorists abroad, such as the killing of a Hamas member in the United Arab Emirates in 2010 and hundreds of preventive strikes on Hezbollah in the Syrian civil war. Israeli police and courts must bring to justice all involved in these alleged murders," said the experts.
"The United Nations has also affirmed that terrorism is a threat to human rights," said the UN experts.
Saul is an Australian academic and Tidball-Binz a Chilean-born medical doctor.
