A United Nations commission of inquiry accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in the occupied West Bank, including extermination, torture and rape, while continuing to “commit genocide in Gaza” despite a US-brokered ceasefire. The report, released on Monday by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, examined killings and physical and mental harm inflicted by state actors from October 7, 2023 to September this year. 4 articlesend of listIt was published the day before Israel’s general elections. The commission concluded that the situation in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, had “severely deteriorated” since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. It said that Israeli military operations, reinforced by sustained settler violence, amounted to a “widespread and systematic attack” against civilians, and that Israeli authorities “intended to collectively punish” residents of the West Bank. West Bank occupied by Hamas-led attack on Israel. “Israeli authorities and forces have committed crimes against humanity of extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence in the West Bank, as well as persecution based on interrelated discriminatory grounds, with nationality, race and ethnicity at their core,” the report says. Extermination The commission also found a sharp increase in deaths from airstrikes in the territory. 2,023, he said, compared to 254 between Oct. 7, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2026. “The intentional killing and wounding of Palestinian civilians and the destruction of homes in the West Bank, combined with Israel’s persistent denial of responsibility, are part of a broader strategy to exterminate and displace Palestinians and impose living conditions that are uninhabitable,” Srinivasan said. Muralidhar, chairman of the commission. The expansion of Israel’s territorial control in Gaza continues to result in deaths and harm to Palestinian civilians who approach or cross” the so-called Yellow Line that demarcates Israeli-controlled areas in the enclave, it said. Israel’s mission in Geneva called the report part of the commission’s “disinformation campaign to demonize the State of Israel and present its very existence as criminal.” “The international community must reject these distortions, repudiate the commission’s conclusions and demand its immediate dissolution,” the mission said in a statement. statement.Continuing genocideThe commission, which does not speak for the UN as a whole, first concluded in September 2025 that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza during the war that followed the October 7 attacks. Israel has flatly rejected the UN commission’s conclusion. In its new report, the commission said that Israeli forces had continued to commit “genocidal acts” against Palestinians in Gaza despite the US-brokered ceasefire last October. attacks aimed at “destroying the Palestinian people, in whole or in part.” At least five Palestinians, including a seven-year-old girl, were killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Monday, according to medical officials there. The Gaza Health Ministry says at least 74,500 people have been killed in the genocidal war, which has displaced nearly the entire population of the territory. people expressing dissent and that the killings and injuries of journalists and human rights defenders had steadily reduced the space for civil society. The three-member commission was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021. Navi Pillay, a former South African High Court judge who led it until last November, won the Nobel Peace Prize this month. West Bank Later on Monday, Volker Turk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, condemned the Hebron operation. He said the threats to empty and erase neighborhoods raised “serious concerns of ethnic cleansing.” According to Turk, the lockdown had already forcibly displaced more than 2,000 Palestinians, caused the demolition of homes and prevented residents from moving freely. “The measures implemented are punitive in nature and are designed to instill fear,” Turk added. Some Israeli ministers have previously called for ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Ynet News last month that Israel should “go to war” in the occupied territory and repeat what it “did in Gaza.” He added that Israeli forces had “cleared” Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied West Bank. Turk insisted that people displaced under the crackdown must be allowed to return to their homes and that “Israel must ensure compensation and reparation for illegal evictions and demolitions.” “Collective punishment is a serious violation of international law,” he said.
