R2P is not a law adjudicated by judiciary institutions, but an international norm grounded in universally shared ethics. Its applicability is debated by political representatives of the UN member states. The lack of agreement on the precise definitions of atrocities enables an array of interpretations. States as self-interested actors favor interpretations that are best aligned with their geopolitical and economic agendas. In this paper, I reflect on how Israel’s use of violence and policies against Palestinian population could constitute an ethnic cleansing. I then argue that R2P fails at its ultimate purpose of protecting populations from human rights atrocities by enabling multiple loopholes such as the notion of statehood and a narrow formulation of atrocities that have been exploited by sophisticated legal states like Israel to legitimize gradual ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. 

This paper is structured as follows. I start by discussing how the unclear definitions of ethnic cleansing can allow interpretations that keep States from taking action, using the Israeli example. Then, I proceed to describe how Israel used these legal gaps to shield themselves from international involvement, considering the counterarguments. After that, I elaborate on the ways in which R2P is intrinsically connected to the Israeli-Palestine conflict, both from the Israeli perspective (to protect their citizens) and from the Palestine side (a population that is being systematically pursued by the State, who are not being protected by the international community). In the next section, I present my interpretation of how atrocity crimes are insufficiently captured in definitions with temporal constraints. Finally, I propose the reframing of R2P to pillar II as a solution to the need for interventions.

Definitions of Ethnic Cleansing

UN deliberations produced multiple definitions of ethnic cleansing. One suggests it's a use of violence to remove persons or groups from a given geographic area; another definition extends to include the use of policy designed by one group to remove civilians of another group (United Nations, n.d.). Under both definitions, Israel has engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians for many decades. Within a year of the declaration of the state of Israel, a nationalist government-backed Zionist group expelled nearly 450,000 Palestinians from their homes. By 1949, Zionists forces committed 223 atrocities, including massacres, home bombings, destruction of villages, displacing over 750,000 Palestinians. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel occupied all the remaining Palestinian territories displacing 430,000 more Palestinians while violating internationally established rights by attacking and expulsing civilians (Al Jazeera, 2017). 

The political attitudes of the Israeli government towards Palestinian have not changed significantly and suggest continuous facilitation of ethnic cleansing. Against international law, Israel has established illegal Israeli settlements throughout Gaza and the West Bank to deem Israeli authority as democratically legitimate on these territories. According to the Israeli mayor for Jerusalem, the most recent displacements in Sheikh Jarrah were meant to "secure the future of Jerusalem as a Jewish capital for the Jewish people '' (Khalidi, 2021). When the displacements provoked a reaction from the terrorist organization Hamas, Israel was able to justify excessively violent actions, including target bombing civilian areas by the pretense of self-defense.

Self-defense argument 

In this conflict, Israel justifies its military strikes that result in civilian injury and death by evoking the right to self-defense against Hamas. Hamas is a fundamentalist militant organization, originated in 1988 during the first uprising against Israeli occupation. Its main declared commitment is the destruction of Israel, and it has been internationally recognized as a terrorist organization (BBC News, 2021). Hamas has fired rockets at civilian populations in Israel and used suicide bombings, killing Israeli citizens. Israel claims that its military operations, including those resulting in hundreds of Palestinian civilian deaths, are a legitimate exercise of its right to defend itself. This justification is echoed by Israeli supporters in the international arena (United Nations, 2021). 

To justify its actions, Israel cites Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which recognizes that all states have an inherent right to protect themselves. This right is accorded to states as the main subjects of international law, allowing them to use self-defense against another state’s unlawful violence (Nasri, 2009). However, since 1967 until now Israel has denied Palestinians’ fundamental right to freedom by restricting the movement of people and goods across sea and land borders, controlling airspace, electricity, telecommunication, and for this reason, it is recognized as an occupational power under international law (Nasri, 2009). As an occupying power conducting military operations on the territory under its authority, it cannot claim Article 51. The right to self-defense in Israeli case, therefore, cannot be justified by international legal frameworks regulating affairs between sovereign states.

Morality and R2P

From a moral perspective, Israel could be justified as acting according to the Pillar I of the responsibility to protect its citizens. Regardless of the technicalities, it is upholding the right to life by countering Hamas operations which are acknowledged to be aimed at the destruction of the Israel population. This argument enables states like the US that are interested in economic and military cooperation with Israel to express “unwavering support” without being viewed as failing its R2P commitment (Hamid, 2021). The fault of this justification is two-fold.

First, the use of power to defend its population is disproportionate and correlated with Israel’s strategy for displacing Palestinians. The proportionality principle requires a response to a violent attack to be proportional to the nature and scope of the attack. The necessary use of violence in self-defense must be limited by this necessity (Upeniece, 2018). The most recent confrontation in May of 2021 resulted in 12 deaths of Israeli civilians compared to 248 deaths and 1900 injuries of Palestinians (Sulaiman, 2021). The confrontation was sparked after Israeli occupying forces seized the property of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and replaced them with settlers, a part of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing strategy. 

UN members highlighted that Israeli airstrikes seemed to disproportionately impact targets of civilian significance, including schools and medical infrastructure (United Nations, 2021). The pattern of disproportionality and seemingly accidental destruction of significant Palestinian livelihood facilities trace back in history. For example, in 2014, when in response to Hamas activity, Israel’s military assault on the Gaza strip killed over 2,100 Palestinians, wounding over 11,000 compared to 72 Israeli civilian deaths and 250 injuries (BBC, 2014). In 2009, Israel Defense Forces exploded white phosphorus shells in the airspace above populated areas of Gaza, killing and injuring civilians and damaging civilian structures, including a UN-funded school, humanitarian aid warehouse, and hospital. At that time, Israel also banned access to Gaza for all media and human rights monitors (Human Rights Watch, 2009). While the evidence of disproportionality has been discussed in the UN debates, it was not sufficient to stop self-interested actors from continuing to justify Israel’s actions as self-defense. 

Second, as an occupying power, Israel would have a responsibility to protect Palestinians from ethnic cleansing in the similar way it protects Israel from ethnic cleansing threats by Hamas. However, an unresolved conflict between de facto occupation and de jure claim that Israel has no authority over West Bank and Gaza makes Israel’s responsibility to protect Palestinians under Pillar I of R2P ambiguous, thus enabling self-interested interpretations. 

A temporal constraint on the definition of atrocity

Despite Israel's continuous use of violence and policies to expulse Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, the international community has been reluctant to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing and interfere under the R2P. The mainstream thinking of international legal scholars seems to favor the definition of ethnic cleansing on a conflict-to-conflict basis, thus discounting the accumulation of atrocities happening over time at a smaller scale. Moreover, the international community's responsibility to protect under Pillar III is confined by "timely and decisive action" criteria. 

The nature of the response, agreed upon by the international community, dictates the nature of the threat that could validate such intervention. In this case, decisiveness and timeliness imply a response to some form of imminent threat that would qualify as an atrocity. Israel's strategy to ethnic cleansing involves numerous smaller encroachments over extensive time frames. To create a pretense of legality, Israel would continue ensuring that at any given period, its use of violence to facilitate the displacement of Palestinians is insufficient to require a drastic response from the UN. This also enables UN member states to continue their political or economic alliances with Israel while seemingly supporting the commitment to human rights and R2P. 

When the definition of ethnic cleansing, “systemic, forced removal of unwanted ethnic, religious or racial groups”, is bound by a narrow time frame, it enables sophisticated legal states like Israel to commit atrocities over decades while remaining unpunished. This is entirely in conflict with the ultimate moral objective of R2P - protecting populations from atrocities. A potential counterargument against expanding the definition to accommodate atrocities committed over longer time scales could be that a loose definition would enable a new set of self-interested interpretations. Specifically, the definition should be kept narrow to ensure it constrains the action of the international community from infringing on a state's right to self-determination. 

The right to self-determination maintains that following the principles of equal rights and equality of opportunity, people have the right to determine their own political and socio-economic destinies. The use of violence by an international community is a clear interference in state governance and, therefore, violates people's right to self-determination. However, the only non-consensual reason to intervene under Pillar III is when a state cannot prevent, or itself enables mass atrocities. When a state such as Israel commits atrocities, it infringes on both the right to life and the right to self-determination, failing to fulfill its responsibility as a sovereign under Pillar I. The prevention of atrocities by R2P could then be viewed as supporting the reestablishment of conditions necessary for people to exercise self-determination.

Given that the state of Israel has sovereign authority over Palestinian territories and has facilitated ethnic cleansing, which is a recognized atrocity requiring protection under R2P, international intervention would not be an infringement on Israel's right to self-determination. Finally, the United Nations Security Council is the sole authority capable of evoking the use of force under the R2P and is meant to do so as a measure of last resort. A diverse set of geopolitical loyalties within the UN council and the ability to veto held by multiple member states should be sufficiently constraining on the possibility of some states invoking R2P-approved use of violence under self-interested motives. 

Since the self-determination argument loses its credibility in the context of Israel-Palestine and implementation constraints of Pillar III of R2P, expanding the definition of ethnic cleansing to accommodate the overtime accumulation of atrocities should be a viable option. More so, it would be an option that better aligns with the ultimate objective of protecting the population as it would enable Palestinians to claim protection from the international community. 

Potential of R2P solution by relying on Pillar II

The practical utility of R2P in preventing ethnic cleansing in Palestine is limited, given the discussion above. To recount, Pillar I will not be invoked due to Israel’s refusal to acknowledge its de facto occupation and responsibilities as Palestinian sovereign. Even if the definition of ethnic cleansing expands to accommodate gradual ethnic cleansing, Pillar III will remain non-applicable as the “timely and decisive action” will be deemed inappropriate to non-immediate threats of a smaller scale. 

In its existing form, the R2P norm could partially achieve its moral aspirations in the context of the Israel-Palestine case if the UN members agree to expand the definition of ethnic cleansing to include gradual accumulation of violence into a larger atrocity and intervene as proposed by Pillar II. Pillar II outlines a commitment to assist states in meeting R2P obligations by working with civil society, state and regional governments. It’s especially relevant as it encourages protection of populations and building capacity before conflicts break out, thus making it more difficult to refute involvement based on the lack of imminent threat of atrocities. Given that Israel refuses to acknowledge its occupation of Palestine and recognize it as the territory under its authority, such a capacity-building effort would not infringe on Israel’s right to self-determination. 71% of the UN states recognize Palestine as a state, making Palestinian government structures and civil society a valid recipient of capacity-building assistance. Such a solution would be acceptable by Palestinian civil society that’s been fighting for international protection and support over the past decades. The secondary benefits of having a global capacity-building presence would be that the pressure of closer international scrutiny could make it more difficult for Israel to exercise excessive violence and advance its ethnic cleansing agenda.