Arya News - Report finds extermination, torture and rape in the West Bank and says genocide in Gaza is continuing despite a ceasefire.
A United Nations commission of inquiry has accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in the occupied West Bank, including extermination, torture and rape, while also continuing “to commit genocide in Gaza” despite a ceasefire brokered by the United States.
The report, published 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, through September of this year.
It was released the day before Israel’s general election .
The commission found that the situation in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, had “deteriorated gravely” since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
It said Israeli military operations , reinforced by sustained violence by settlers, amounted to a “widespread and systematic attack” on civilians, and that Israeli authorities “intended to collectively punish” residents of the occupied West Bank for the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
“The Israeli authorities and forces have committed the crimes against humanity of extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence in the West Bank, as well as persecution based on intersecting discriminatory grounds, with nationality, race and ethnicity at its core,” the report said.
Extermination
The commission also found a sharp rise in deaths from air strikes in the territory.
Six Palestinians were killed in air attacks in the occupied West Bank from 2008 to October 6, 2023, it said, compared with 254 from October 7, 2023, to September 30, 2026.
“The intentional killing and injuring of Palestinian civilians and destruction of homes in the West Bank combined with Israel’s persistent denial of responsibility form part of a broader strategy to exterminate and displace Palestinians and impose conditions of life that are unlivable,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, the commission’s chair.
“Meanwhile, Israel’s expansion of territorial control in Gaza continues to result in the killing and harming of Palestinian civilians who approach or cross” the so-called Yellow Line that demarcates Israeli-controlled areas in the enclave, he said.
Israel’s mission in Geneva called the report part of the commission’s “misinformation campaign to demonize the State of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal”.
“The international community must reject these distortions, repudiate the commission’s findings and demand its immediate dissolution,” the mission said in a statement.
Continued genocide
The 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 finding.
In its new report, the commission said Israeli forces had continued to commit “genocidal acts” against Palestinians in Gaza despite the ceasefire brokered by the US last October, with attacks intended to “destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part”.
At least five Palestinians, including a seven-year-old girl, were killed in Israeli air attacks 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 all of the territory’s population.
The report also examined abuses by Palestinian security forces. It found that the Palestinian Authority had targeted people who voiced dissent, and that the killing and wounding of journalists and human rights defenders had steadily narrowed 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 lockdown
The report was released as Israeli forces carried out a crackdown in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron after a shooting near the city last week. Israel imposed a lockdown on Hebron on Friday, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to extend it across the entire West Bank.
Later on Monday, Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, condemned the Hebron operation. He said threats to empty and erase neighbourhoods raised “serious concerns of ethnic cleansing”.
According to Turk, the lockdown had already forcibly displaced more than 2,000 Palestinians, led to the demolition of homes and prevented residents from moving freely.
“The sweeping steps taken raise grave concerns of unnecessary and disproportionate use of force – which must end,” he said.
“The Israeli lockdown is confining many to their homes and their immediate neighbourhoods. Declarations by senior Israeli government officials indicate that the measures implemented are punitive in nature and designed to instil fear. This is unacceptable,” Turk added.
Some Israeli ministers have previously called for the occupied West Bank and Gaza to be ethnically cleansed.
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 out” Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
Turk insisted that people displaced under the clampdown must be allowed to return home and that “Israel must ensure compensation and reparation for unlawful evictions and demolitions”.
“Collective punishment is a grave violation of international law,” he said.