UN commission of inquiry accuses Israel of 'extermination' in the West Bank
A day before Israel's election, the commission set up by the UN Human Rights Council released a new report. Israel rejected the accusations and called for the body to be dissolved.
Symbolic image · Photo: Ludovic Courtès / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a report released Monday that Israel has committed crimes against humanity in the West Bank, including extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, and persecution. Military operations together with sustained settler violence amount to a "widespread and systematic attack" on civilians, it said. The commission also said Israel continues to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding it first made in September 2025.
Commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar described, according to AFP, "a broader strategy to exterminate and displace Palestinians and impose conditions of life that are unliveable." The report also criticizes the Palestinian Authority for targeting people who voice dissenting views, resulting in killings. The three-member panel was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 and does not speak for the United Nations as a whole.
Israel's mission in Geneva called the report part of a "misinformation campaign to demonize the State of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal" and urged the commission's immediate dissolution. Hamas's October 2023 attack killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures; more than 74,200 people have since been killed in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry.