Protect: To defend or guard from danger or injury; to support or assist against hostile or inimical action;

to preserve from attack, prosecution, harassment, etc.; to keep safe, take care of; to extend patronage to;
to shield from attack or damage. i

The majority of wars today are civilian-based civil wars in which the shopping mall, the
outdoor caf, the bus route, and the weekend marketplace have become battlegrounds, targeted because
they are the places in which civilians live and work. ii These intra-state conflicts markedly expose the most
vulnerable populations to acts of war. Furthermore, it is the recognized responsibility of the state to
protect its citizens from harm, to defend them from danger, to save them from prosecution in short, to
keep them safe. The ability to protect ones citizens is intrinsic to the very definition of a state.
Publicly, Israel positions itself as the ultimate protector of democracy and enforcer of security in
the Middle East. However, the implementation of the recent international humanitarian norm
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) calls this reputation into question, perhaps most notably or at least most
recently during Israels Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in Gaza in July 2014. This essay will focus on
the legal and moral standing of R2P as illustrated through OPE as an example of the challenges R2P faces
as an emerging norm when it is disregarded by state actors in favor of impunity.
R2P is narrow in scope, as authoritatively expressed in the 2005 World Summit Outcome
Document (WSOD), is strictly limited to the four atrocity crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity,
war crimes and ethnic cleansing. R2P was unanimously adopted by member states at the world summit,
including Israel. R2P consists of three pillars: 1) the states responsibility to protect its citizens from mass
atrocities and their incitement; 2) the international communitys responsibility to encourage and assist
states; and 3) the international communitys responsibility to use diplomatic means to protect civilians or
take collective action if a state continues to manifestly fail to protect civilians. iii

Let us apply now the R2P framework to Operation Protective Edge.

In June 2014 rockets and mortars fired by Palestinian armed groups at southern Israel intensified,
alongside an increase in Israeli air strikes. iv Tensions further increased following the disappearance and
killing of three Israeli youths in the southern West Bank on 12 June killings that the Israeli government
attributed to Hamas.v On 7 July 2014, the Israeli army launched a military operation code-named
Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. Following on from several weeks of escalation, the operation had the
stated objectives of preventing Palestinian rockets from firing on southern Israel and destroying the
military infrastructure of Hamas and other armed groups. vi Israels security challenges are undeniable, the
extent of these challenges is however open for dispute. Within this difficult reality it is crucial to
understand what constitutes a necessary and legitimate security measure, as the disparate results of OPE
would suggest. Ultimately, during this 51-day-long assault, 2,257 Palestinians were killed (approximately
numbers disputed).vii Some 70 percent of them were identified as civilians by the United Nations,
including at least 519 children. In stark contrast, actions by or engagements with Palestinian resistance
fighters killed 66 Israeli soldiers and seven civilians (approximately numbers disputed). viii It is the
obligation of the state to protect its people and Israel appears to be capable of and willing to protect their
own population against Hamass indiscriminate, albeit relatively ineffective, rockets. However, it is

necessary to apply R2P, which implores the state to protect all people, to Operation Protective Edge,
which excused the state for its lack of protection of Palestinians as it sought security.
Thus, the question of Gazas standing as either an occupied or independent entity is central to
understanding R2Ps applicability in OPE. R2P is conventionally understood as applying only to intrastate crises. Therefore, if Palestine were a state, which it has never been, R2P would not be conventionally
applied. Moreover, it is precisely because of the lack of a Palestinian state that Palestinians depend on
international humanitarian laws, like R2P, to protect them. If the role of the state, as mentioned, is to
protect the people, the role of international humanitarian law is to protect the people when the state is
unwilling, unable, or nonexistent as it is the case of the Palestinians. Officially, Israel withdrew from
Gaza in 2005. However there are many reasons to argue that Gaza remains under de-facto Israel rule.
What constitutes measures of effective control in the context of Gaza? In 2007, John Dugard,
then UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian
Territory, explained that the manifestations of Israels continuing effective control include: (a) substantial
control of Gazas six land crossings; (b) control through military incursions, rocket attacks and sonic
booms, and the declaration of areas inside the Strip as no-go zones where anyone who enters can be
shot; (c) complete control of Gazas airspace and territorial waters; and (d) control of the Palestinian
Population Registry, which has the power and authority to define who is a Palestinian and who is a
resident of Gaza.ix To these must be added Israels continuing capacity to invade Gaza, arrest residents,
and transport them into Israel. Thus, Israel remains the de facto occupying power of Gaza, and
consequently the conflict can be deemed intra-state and R2P should be applied. This means that, whilst
Israel has a right and a responsibility to protect its citizens from crimes against humanity, it also has a
responsibility to do the same for Palestinians in Gaza. Control entails responsibility.
In spite of this technical understanding of the formal applicability of the R2P principle, at the
moral and theoretical heart of R2P is the global commitment to protect all people, regardless of ethnicity,
religion or statehood. As Ban Ki-moon said, R2P applies everywhere and at all times, and it certainly
applies to OPE in Gaza. In this regard, it should not be conditional. It does not arise or evaporate with
circumstance. It is universal and enduring; it applies everywhere, all the time. Therefore, perhaps asking
whether R2P applies falsely implies that there are situations where there is no responsibility to protect
populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.
Ultimately, despite an official commitment to the principles enshrined in R2P, commitment
remains rhetorical in this situation at both an individual state level (Israel ignoring its pillar one
responsibilities) and at an international level (the international community ignoring its pillar three
responsibilities). This blatant disregard for international humanitarian law, as well R2P and other related
norms, suggests that these principles are more preferential than universal. Thus, creating a culture of
impunity. Today, in its near-obsessive pursuit of security, the state of Israel ceases to abide by
international law and is then afforded the luxury of international diplomatic complacency.
It should be noted that international law is not a panacea for the harms and ills of conflict.
However, international law does provide a standard against which empirical realities can be judged and an
instrumental means through which consequences for violations can be pursued. For the Palestinian
people, a stateless people living under occupation, international law is exceptionally important because
they have no national law-based alternative to assert, let alone exercise, their right of self-determination.
International law provides the point of reference for that and all the other rights they can claim by virtue
of being humans. That is the unique perspective that R2P brings to a situation such as that in Gaza: a
singular focus on the protection of populations from atrocity crimes. Of course, this is not the only

relevant perspective, but it is an important one. R2P prompts us to take the victims of atrocity crimes and
those threatened by these crimes as our starting point and to focus on their protection. As long as the
occupation continueswhich it will until there is peace and sovereignty and self-determinationwhat
happens to the Palestinian people is a matter of international law, and therefore of international concern.
Thus, when the international community and its state actors like Israel are capable of protecting civilians
but instead choose not to or worse, choose to inflict harm the blatant disregard for international law
must have consequences. Otherwise, international humanitarian law perhaps ceases to have meaning at all
as impunity becomes the only international norm enforced.

i "Definition of Protect in English:." Protect: Definition of Protect in Oxford Dictionary (American English) (US).
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/protect.

ii Anderson, M. Today's wars and the pursuit of justice. Do no harm: How aid can support peace--or war.
iii The Responsibility to Protect. (n.d.). http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/ICISS Report.pdf
iv OCHA, Gaza Inital Rapid Assessment, available at: http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/gaza_
mira_report_9september.pdf.

v Ibid
vi Ibid
vii "IMEU Institute for Middle East Understanding." 50 Days of Death & Destruction: Israel's "Operation Protective Edge".
http://imeu.org/article/50-days-of-death-destruction-israels-operation-protective-edge.

viii Ibid
ix Dugard, John. "Apartheid, International Law, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory."
http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/3/867.full.