Israel committing crimes against humanity in occupied West Bank: UN
United Nations investigators have reported that Israeli authorities and forces are committing crimes against humanity including extermination, torture, and rape in the occupied West Bank.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory stated on Monday that the Israeli government and its forces are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestinian territory. The report comes amid Israeli forces carrying out a clampdown in Hebron following a gun attack last week, including expulsions and demolitions.
Systematic Attacks
The commission found that Israeli military operations, reinforced by sustained settler violence, constitute a "widespread and systematic attack" against civilians in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967. The report specifically identified "extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence" as crimes against humanity being committed.
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.
Israeli Response
Israel's mission in Geneva rejected the report, calling it part of the inquiry's "misinformation campaign to demonise the State of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal." The statement urged the international community to "reject these distortions, repudiate the commission's findings and demand its immediate dissolution."
Deteriorating Situation
The commission's new report focused on killings and bodily and mental harm caused by both Israeli and Palestinian security forces since October 2023. It found that the situation in the occupied West Bank has deteriorated gravely since Hamas's attack from Gaza that month, with Israeli authorities intending to "collectively punish" West Bank civilians.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, between October 7, 2023 and October 9, 2026, 1,143 Palestinians – at least 250 of them children – were killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The report was released the day before Israel's general election.
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