On October 18, the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) published an open letter calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, which has placed the territory on the “precipice of a humanitarian catastrophe.” . In one week, it was signed by more than 460 NGOs from around the world.
Even before Israel’s latest war on Gaza, GCR2P, founded in 2008 to promote the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, issued five warnings this year regarding atrocities committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories.
An August 31 report highlighted the “systematic nature of (Israel’s) human rights violations and inhumane acts” in the occupied Palestinian territories, amounting to crimes against humanity or war crimes, including collective punishments and the imposition of “apartheid”.
Interestingly, some of the strongest proponents of the R2P doctrine and GCR2P, the United States and European countries, do not seem to agree with the center’s assessment of the situation in Gaza. They also fail to respect the “responsibility to protect” in the event that the Palestinian people are killed indiscriminately by Israeli forces. Rather, they actively aid and abet Israeli war crimes, flouting the international legal principles they have spent decades rhetorically promoting.
The emergence of R2P
The roots of the R2P doctrine go back to the international reaction to the recurrence of mass atrocities during conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda and elsewhere in the 1990s.
Given that the UN was created on the principle of deterring mass atrocities, such as the Holocaust, the proliferation of such crimes, even in the heart of Europe, has raised alarms in the “more” camp. never that.”
As the adoption of R2P approached, many regional and international actors felt compelled to intervene in civil conflicts. Since the early 1990s, the Organization of African Unity (renamed the African Union in 2002) has taken a more proactive stance in favor of promoting peace, security, democracy and development on the continent. .
Sub-regional bodies such as ECOWAS in West Africa and IGAD in East Africa were already actively involved in combating protracted conflicts in their neighborhoods, often intervening militarily to end civil wars or reverse military coups. In Europe, NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999 invoked the principles of international humanitarianism.
The UN has practiced international interventions since its creation and continues to do so. However, the idea of R2P went beyond usual international peacekeeping by making sovereignty, the cornerstone of the United Nations system, conditional.
This idea was first explored in a 1996 book, Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa, published by the US-based Brookings Institution. The lead author was Sudanese academic and diplomat Francis Deng.
This idea was developed further in a 2001 report entitled The Responsibility to Protect, published by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), sponsored by Canada and led by the former Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Gareth Evans.
The report argues that international intervention to protect civilians from mass atrocities, including genocide and ethnic cleansing, should only take place when the sovereign state concerned fails to fulfill this responsibility. In such a case, the international community should attempt to assist the affected state or intervene peacefully. Military intervention must be a proportional measure of last resort, based on good intentions and reasonable prospects of success.
In 2005, the World Summit was held at the United Nations headquarters in New York to address a number of pressing global issues. R2P was among the key commitments expressed in the World Summit outcome document, signed unanimously by 170 heads of state and government.
Since its adoption, the doctrine has been invoked in numerous UN Security Council resolutions, starting with Resolution 1706 on Darfur in 2006, followed by Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on Libya, Resolution 1975 on Ivory Coast and the 2014 resolution on Yemen – all published. in 2011.
The resolution on Libya was followed by international intervention in its civil war, which provoked a strong backlash from Russia and China and raised fears that it would be used to pave the way for change deliberate regime rather than the imposition of peace.
Failure of R2P in Palestine
Article 139 of the Outcome Document states: “We are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council…if peaceful means prove insufficient and national authorities fail clearly to protect their populations against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
The case of Palestine clearly fits into this definition. For decades, “national authorities” – in this case the occupying power, Israel – have manifestly and repeatedly failed to protect the population under its authority from the atrocities listed above. The situation in Gaza should now also call for the application of R2P.
Israel is committing a growing number of war crimes in the enclave: systematically targeting civilian residences and killing entire families, forcibly displacing more than a million people, deliberately bombing hospitals and schools, and intentionally depriving all of the civilian population with water, food, medicine and fuel. .
Gaza is practically a guardianship of the international community. As an occupied territory, without an independent state, without a recognized government and without an army, the state stipulated by R2P as the first line of civil protection does not exist. The occupying power is the one committing the atrocities, in violation of all international norms, instruments and treaties.
Furthermore, the international community as a whole, and the UN in particular, bears doubly responsibility for the current plight of the indigenous Palestinian population. In 1947, the UN passed the resolutions that created Israel, but since then it has failed to deal with the consequences of its actions, as Israeli governments have violated every provision of international rules.
The resulting dispossession and continued victimization of Palestinians have not resulted in resolute international action. In fact, the proverbial “international community” continues to punish Palestinians for their misfortune, turning them into permanent refugees, in their country and everywhere else. Worse still, members of this international community subsidize Israeli efforts to expel Palestinians from their homes, but then refuse to welcome them as refugees.
Today, the international community is complicit in the atrocities committed in Gaza, where civilians have nowhere to go to escape the bombing. There is nowhere to do “ethnic cleansing”.
A failed doctrine?
Those who remain silent in the face of this televised barbarity are complicit. Those who aid and abet Israeli crimes are directly responsible.
Repeating and endorsing the genocidal rhetoric of Israel’s most extremist government, repeating its incendiary propaganda and offering weapons, money and intelligence to support the genocidal attack on civilians are certainly criminal acts.
Reflecting on this reality, Crispin Blunt, a Conservative member of the British parliament, threatened to sue British government ministers for complicity in Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Victims of atrocities could and should also bring their tormentors before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Ironically, the states that authorize Israeli atrocities are also among the former champions of the R2P doctrine and the ICC as the ultimate haven of justice against the most depraved transgressors.
Watching the leaders of the most powerful countries come together to mobilize the world’s most formidable arsenals and fleets against the planet’s poorest and most oppressed people is a lesson in moral blindness. This seems to vindicate critics of R2P who argue that the doctrine has always been a subterfuge for imperialism thinly disguised under false moral pretenses.
I do not agree. I believe that this doctrine emerged at a time when the West in general and Europe in particular felt that they could afford to act ethically. The end of the Cold War, coupled with the so-called “revolution in military affairs”, generated a “security surplus” and made the West feel invincible. Like fictional superheroes, they could come to the aid of victims without fearing the consequences.
The Hamas attack on October 7 revived the insecurities generated by Western misadventures in the region. What stands out about the Hamas attack is not so much its brutality as its audacity. The resistance movement has carried out many brutal acts in the past, such as indiscriminate suicide attacks. However, its recent operation on October 7 was marked by military professionalism and sophistication.
Not only did Hamas fighters breach the postmodern defensive systems of the world’s most paranoid state, but they also took full control of the territory for a few days, with the Israeli army and state in total paralysis. The realization of its total vulnerability caused the loss of Spartan Israel, currently under the control of its most militaristic non-conformists.
Interestingly, Israel and its main supporters now seem more convinced than Hamas that the Israeli state is in real danger of collapse. As I have argued elsewhere, it is hysterical narratives about insecurity that push actors to view genocide as the proverbial “lesser evil.” Ironically, this also sets them on a path to self-destruction.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.