The laws of electrostatics predict that protons will

The laws of the electrostatics were developed by Coulomb and are further detailed or subdivided into two as follows:

(1) The first one talks about the similarities in the charges of the particles and what happens to them. This states that like charges repel.

(2) The second one quantifies the field between two particles with equation showing that field is directly proportional to the masses and inversely to the square of the distance between them.

In this item, we can then say that the protons (having the same charges) will have to repel from each other in accordance to statement 1 of the law.