The Responsibility To Protect Doctrine In The Context Of The Atrocity Crimes In The Occupied Palestinian Territories: Does It Apply?

After a long series of catastrophic humanitarian atrocities and the failure of the United Nation and the international community to contain, the responsibility to protect (RtoP) idea has emerged for the purpose of preventing mass atrocities from occurrence and protecting populations subjected to them. The idea has soon enshrined and adopted by the United Nation General Assembly (UNGA) by overwhelming majority voting of member states in 2005. The RtoP emphasizes that each state has a primary responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and all other states are obliged to assist the state to carry out its responsibility. When the state, deliberately or weakly, fails to protect its population then the international community has a responsibility to protect the populations through both; non-coercive and, in extreme situations as a last resort through the Security Council, militarily intervention (UN General Assembly, 2005). Although heavily criticized, RtoP was explicitly invoked in numerous Security Council (SC) resolutions and most prominently in the case of Libya 2011. The case in concern in this study is one of a tremendously complicated situations that largely overlooked, namely the link between the RtoP and the likely enduring atrocity crimes within the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs); Gaza from frequent war rounds and the blockade, and West Bank alleged continuous apartheid, persecution, and ethnic cleansing. The aim of this study is to determine whether or not the responsibility to protect is applicable for the protection of civilians in interstate crises such as the case of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) according to the international law.