Israel committing crimes against humanity in occupied West Bank: UN

Israeli authorities and forces are committing crimes against humanity including extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, says report.

Israel has committed crimes against humanity including “extermination” in the occupied West Bank, United Nations-mandated investigators have reported.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said on Monday that the Israeli government and its forces are also responsible for other war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Palestinian territory, including torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence.

The release of the report came as Israeli forces carried out a clampdown, including expulsions and demolitions, on Hebron following a gun attack last week.

The commission, which does not speak for the UN itself, first determined in a September ۲۰۲۵ report that Israel had committed “genocide” in its war on Gaza following Hamas’s deadly October ۷, ۲۰۲۳ attack on Israel – a finding Israel flatly rejects.

In its new report, issued the day before Israel’s general election, the commission found that in the West Bank – which Israel has occupied since ۱۹۶۷ – Israeli military operations, reinforced by sustained settler violence, constitute a “widespread and systematic attack” against civilians.

“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,” it said.

Israel’s mission in Geneva said the report was part of the inquiry’s “misinformation campaign to demonise 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,” it said in a statement.

Peace prize

The three-member UN investigative team was established by the UN Human Rights Council in ۲۰۲۱.

Former South African High Court judge Navi Pillay, who chaired the investigation until November ۲۰۲۵, won the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month.

The commission’s new report is focused on killings and bodily and mental harm caused by both Israeli and Palestinian security forces since October ۲۰۲۳.

It found that the situation in the occupied West Bank has deteriorated gravely since the Palestinian armed group Hamas’s attack from Gaza that month.

The commission found that the Israeli authorities “intended to collectively punish” West Bank civilians due to the Hamas attack.

Israel’s military offensive on Gaza has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza and killed more than ۷۴,۵۰۰ people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, between October ۷, ۲۰۲۳ and October ۹, ۲۰۲۶, ۱,۱۴۳ Palestinians – at least ۲۵۰ of them children – were killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.