In recent weeks, requests for deploying a protective force in Gaza and in the West Bank have resurfaced. They came from health professionals and medical organizations, Palestinian NGOs and even Arab civilians. Last year, the Arab League and human rights organizations also called for sending a peacekeeping force to Gaza.
In light of the global standardization of live genocide and political reluctance to enforce international law, this request represents a minimum measure to safeguard the Palestinians against unimaginable horrors.
The demand is firmly based on international law. In Gaza, a peacekeeping force could advance the duty of the United States and the United Nations to protect a people faced with a genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity under investigation at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Both in Gaza and the West Bank, these forces could support the process of implementing the occupation, as required by the General Assembly of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.
And yet, the demand for a protective force is faced with major challenges. The crucial question is: can they be overcome?
The justification of a protective force
The situation in Gaza and the West Bank has reached an emergency and an unprecedented end. The military pressure of armed groups in Lebanon and Yemen exercised themselves to try to protect the Palestinian people failed to stop atrocities, and the Lebanese and Yemeni people paid a high price.
This is why an international protection force is necessary urgently. Its deployment would realize what the Palestinian population asks the international community to do: protect them. This force would serve as “human shield” – and not in the derogatory sense armed by the Israeli army to justify its genocide by supervising the whole Palestinian population as human shields but in the sense of a literal peaceful barrier between the Palestinians and their annihilation.
His presence could make the difference between life and mass death for civilians who have faced a year and a half of bombing, siege and famine.
In addition, this force offers a critical alternative to more sinister “solutions”. While Israel degenerates its genocidal campaign, imposing conditions designed to destroy Palestinian life, the United States has launched the idea of deploying its troops in Gaza to “take it back”.
Such a decision would constitute an illegal American invasion of Palestine, further anchoring colonial violence under the guise of “stability”. On the other hand, the forces responsible for the responsibility of protecting the Palestinians – and not the imperial and colonial interests – could provide a legitimate and anchored international counter -measure.
The challenges of the formation of a protective force
The deployment of protection forces through a UN mandate requires resolution of the United Nations Security Council. The United States will certainly oppose any attempt to create such a force, just as it has canceled various ceasefire resolutions, in fact allowing the genocide and blocking any effort to keep even the most fundamental principles of humanity under the Charter of the United Nations.
The situation is undoubtedly more desperate under an American administration which actively supports mass evictions and the deportations of the Palestinian population of Gaza. US President Donald Trump himself described the Gaza Strip as a “demolition site” and expressed his desire for the United States to transform it into “Middle East Riviera”.
Given that resolution calling for a protective force would be blocked on the Security Council, the alternative is for a call for multilateral action through the United Nations General Assembly. Again, American coercive power strongly influences votes – including that of the Palestinian authority – but it is always a viable option. The first such decision could occur is the next session of the General Assembly in May and would require immense diplomatic pressure.
A vote for a protective force by the general meeting would not be binding and would require approval of the Security Council. However, this could help create a coalition of countries signaling their desire to intervene with concrete protection measures to defend Palestinian life after 19 months of empty words without tangible action.
Another challenge is that the mechanism for deploying peace forces has long been considered with suspicion by the States of South World – and for a good reason. The United Nations peacekeeping troops have often served as police tools in the world South and as extensions of imperial control, sometimes committing atrocities themselves.
Historically, peacekeeping has largely aligned the imperial interests, which rarely oppose them. Troop contribution countries often have questionable military alliances, and peacekeeping operations depend on the financing of great donors, such as the United States. A good example of this is the peacekeeping mission of Unifil in Lebanon, which has an unusual European presence and which has not protected the southern country against the aggression of Israel.
Given all of these challenges, do we abandon the demand for a protective force in the occupied Palestinian territory? Absolutely not.
A radical reimagination of protective forces
The obstacles are real, but the demand for a protective force is legitimate. It comes from several sectors of Palestinian society itself and is approved worldwide by individuals and antigenocide groups.
In a recent petition, Palestinian and international health workers proposed a model: a mission of neutral multinational protection – not to mediate, but to protect. Their requirements include the exclusion of the accomplice nations of the attack on the contribution of troops and a warrant for the protective force to physically protect Palestinian civilians and health workers, to restore safe humanitarian and medical corridors and to support the reconstruction led by the Palestinians of the Palestinian infrastructure.
Likewise, the Palestinian NGO network has called for international protection, open level passages in Gaza and guaranteed safety aid corridors.
Meanwhile, Egyptian civilians have repeatedly declared their desire to enter Gaza as a civil shielding force if the borders are open. This highlights the protection potential powered by people alongside formal mechanisms.
To translate these multiple calls into action, a radical reimagination of what a protective force might look like and how it could work.
First, we need states not involved in genocide groups and civil society to put pressure to bypass the United Nations Security Council. They must concentrate all the efforts and take advantage of the special emergency session of the United Nations General Assembly in May to withstand American pressure and push for a vote on a peacekeeping mandate.
Second, we need new South-South alliances. This means that the strategic partnerships between the countries of the South World worldwide are not involved in the genocide to finance and provide a mission without imperial influence which can take place even without the authorization of the Security Council.
Third, we need an unprecedented mobilization of civil society in a single direction: to put pressure on governments to approve and participate in a truly neutral protective force.
The United States would oppose the creation of new coalitions which center Palestinian life and present themselves as the champions of the South from the responsibility to protect the doctrine. He would see this as a challenge of his hegemony and the Western monopoly on the discourse on antigenocide, and he would use his veto on the board. However, the countries and civil society groups involved in the establishment of the protective force should ignore the veto, to form the mission independently and to challenge the international genocidal order in which we live.
The challenges faced by this radical reimagination effort are great. But the alternative is to continue to leave unprotected Palestinian lives – at the mercy of an intensification process of extermination of colonials. We must act now and put pressure for a protective force for occupied Palestine.
The opinions expressed in this article are the own authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
