In the past few weeks, the need for the deployment of protective force in Gaza and the West Bank has surfaced. They come from health professionals and medical institutions, Palestinian NGOs and even Arab civilians. Last year, the Arab League and human rights groups also called for the delivery of peacekeeping forces to Gaza.
Given the global normalization of genocide and the unwillingness to enforce political requirements of international law, this demand represents a minimum measure to protect Palestinians from unimaginable horror.
The demand is firmly based on international law. In Gaza, peacekeeping forces can promote the protection of the peoples facing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the International Court of Criminal Court is under investigation. In Gaza and the West Bank, such forces can support the end of the occupation process, as requested by the United Nations General Assembly and the International Court of Justice.
However, the need for protection forces faces significant challenges. The key question is: Can it be overcome?
The situation in Gaza and the West Bank has reached unprecedented urgency and physicality. Lebanese armed groups and Yemen’s military pressure efforts to protect the Palestinian people have not tried to stop the atrocities, and the people of Lebanon and Yemen have paid a heavy price.
This is why international protection is urgently needed. Its deployment will meet the Palestinian population demands what the international community does: protect them. This force will serve as a "human shield" - the derogatory meaning of Israeli military weapons is not justified by using the entire Palestinian population as a human shield, but rather a literal barrier to peace between the Palestinians and their annihilation.
Its existence could mean the difference between life and mass deaths facing bombing, siege and hunger for a year and a half.
Furthermore, this power provides a vital alternative to the more sinister "solution." As Israel escalates its genocide campaign to destroy Palestinian lives, the United States has proposed the idea of deploying its troops to Gaza to “take over”.
Such an action would constitute an illegal US invasion of Palestine, further consolidating colonial violence under the guise of maintaining "stability". By contrast, forces responsible for protecting Palestinians (rather than imperial and colonial interests) can provide legitimate, internationally rooted countermeasures.
The adoption of the United Nations mandate deployment of the protection force requires UN Security Council resolutions. The United States will certainly deny any attempt to create such power, just as it strikes various ceasefire resolutions, which can actually achieve genocide and prevent any effort, even under the Charter of the United Nations, even the most basic principles of mankind.
There is no doubt that this situation has become increasingly desperate under the U.S. government, which is actively supporting the massive deportation and deportation from Gaza. U.S. President Donald Trump himself described the Gaza Strip as a “demolition site” and expressed his hope that the United States will turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
As a result of the request for the protection of force in the Security Commission, another option is to conduct multilateral action through the United Nations General Assembly. There, the US's coercive capacity also seriously affected the votes including the Palestinian authorities, but it remains a viable option. This move could happen at the first time at the next conference in May, requiring huge diplomatic pressure.
The General Assembly will not be binding on the vote of the protection force and therefore requires the approval of the Security Council. However, it could help build a coalition of nations, showing their willingness to intervene in specific protection measures to defend 19 months of empty speech without tangible action to defend Palestinian life.
Another challenge is that the mechanism for deploying peacekeeping forces has long been suspected by states in the southern states, and that there is good reason. United Nations peacekeeping forces often act as policing tools in the global South and extension of imperial control, sometimes committing atrocities on their own.
Historically, peacekeeping was primarily consistent with the interests of the Empire and rarely opposed them. Force-occupied countries often have suspicious military alliances, and peacekeeping operations depend on funding from large donors, such as the United States. A good example is the Unifil peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, which has an unusually high European mission and has failed to protect Israeli aggression in the south of the country.
Given all these challenges, have we abandoned the need for protection forces in the occupied Palestinian territory? Absolutely not.
The barriers are real, but the need for protection is legal. It comes from multiple sectors of the Palestinian society itself and is recognized worldwide by anti-focus and pain-resistant individuals and groups.
In a recent petition, Palestinian and international health workers proposed a model: neutral transnational protection mission - not mediation, but shielding. Their demands include excluding the attacking states from contributing forces, as well as the mandate of the protection forces of the protection forces to cover up the bodies of Palestinian civilians and medical staff, restore safe humanitarian and medical corridors, and support the reconstruction of the Palestinian-led infrastructure in Gaza.
Similarly, the Palestinian NGO network calls for international protection, opening beams to Gaza and ensuring security assistance corridors.
Meanwhile, Egyptian civilians repeatedly announced their willingness to enter Gaza as civilian shielding troops if the border is opened. This emphasizes the potential of human-driven protection and formal mechanisms.
To translate these multiple calls into actions, a fundamental reimagining of how protective forces look and how they need to work.
First, we need countries that are not involved in genocide and civil society groups to promote bypassing the UN Security Council. They must focus all efforts on the emergency special session of the UN General Assembly in May to withstand the pressure from the United States and promote a vote on peacekeeping mandate.
Second, we need a new South-South Confederation. This means a strategic partnership between the global southern countries that are not involved in genocide to fund and personnel without imperial influence, even without the permission of the Security Council.
Third, we need to mobilize unprecedented mobilization in civil society in one direction: oppressing governments to recognize and participate in truly neutral protective forces.
The United States will oppose the creation of a new alliance centered on Palestinian life and become the Southern champion of the responsibility for protecting doctrine. It will be a disregard for hegemony and the Western confrontation with Tijo's discourse, which will use its veto in the Council. However, states and civil society groups involved in the establishment of protective force should ignore the veto power, constitute tasks independently and violate the international genocide order in which we live.
The challenges facing this radical reimagination work are enormous. However, another option is to continue to keep Palestinian lives unprotected - free from the intensified process of colonial extinction by settlers. We must act immediately and provide protection for occupied Palestine.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own views and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.