The word ceasefire carries a promise. It suggests that the bombs will stop falling, that the dust will settle, and that people will be able to walk outside without wondering whether they will make it home. For Palestinians in Gaza, that promise has not been kept. In a new report released Monday, a group of independent experts commissioned by the United Nations said that the ceasefire agreement has not stopped what they describe as genocide being carried out by Israel in the territory. The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory accused Israeli forces of continuing to commit genocidal acts, saying that those acts are driven by “the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza.” The report also accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in the West Bank, including torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence and persecution. These are not neutral legal phrases. They describe the texture of daily life for people living under fire and under occupation: the sound of drones overhead, the fear in a child’s eyes, the coldness of a prison cell, the shame of being stripped bare in front of strangers. For a mother who has lost her home, a ceasefire is not a diplomatic event; it is a chance to wash her child’s face without shaking. But instead of relief, the commission says, the nightmare has continued in different form, expanding beyond Gaza into the West Bank and into places where people thought they might be safe.
Israel’s reaction to the report was immediate and angry. Its mission in Geneva called for the commission’s dissolution and, in a post on X, accused the body of running a “misinformation campaign to demonize the state of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal.” This is not the first time Israel has attacked the commission’s credibility. For years, Israeli officials have said that the commission is biased, that its members are selected by a hostile body, and that it ignores the complexities of fighting a war against armed militants who deliberately hide among civilians. Israel has denied accusations of genocide in Gaza and has denied that its forces committed sexual assault. In the Israeli view, the report is not an objective account but a political weapon. This divide reflects a deeper conflict between two narratives. Israelis remember October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants invaded their communities, killed 1,200 people, and took 251 hostages, and they see the war, and the detention and security measures that followed, as grim necessities. Palestinians see an ever-expanding settler enterprise, a military occupation, and a campaign that has killed tens of thousands, and they see the report as proof that the world finally recognizes their suffering. The gap between these realities is not easy to bridge. But the report forces the world to ask a hard question: can both things be true—that Israel was violently attacked, and that its response has gone beyond any acceptable limit? The commission’s answer, in plain terms, is yes.
The most painful part of the report is its account of sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Since October 2023, the commission says, it has documented multiple cases in which prison guards and soldiers assaulted people who were already helpless, blindfolded, shackled, and completely in their power. One account tells of a pregnant woman who was strip-searched by female guards who touched her inside her anus and vagina. Another tells of a woman who was beaten and insulted with sexist slurs while guards refused to let her use the toilet or give her sanitary pads; she bled onto her clothes and the chair where she was interrogated. The report also describes violence against men. The commission said it documented six cases at the Sde Teiman military prison, where guards raped a Palestinian detainee with a stick and then forced him to put the stick in his mouth until he vomited. In another case, guards tied a plastic cord around a man’s genitals and ordered him to urinate. The Associated Press, which reported on these findings, said it could not independently corroborate the accounts, and Israel has denied them. But the level of detail, the specificity of the suffering, and the consistency of the testimony make it impossible to simply shrug them off. These are not stories about policy disagreements or military tactics. They are stories about the deliberate destruction of a person’s dignity, of their sense of safety in their own body. For the women and men who survived these acts, speaking is an act of courage. For those who have not come forward, the report is a way of saying their pain was not hidden from the world. It is difficult to describe the cruelty of these accounts without feeling complicit in their telling, but the alternative is worse: silence.
Why does this report matter? Because it is not a press release, and it is not a political slogan. The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has a specific mandate: to document in minute detail the allegations and evidence of crimes, so that perpetrators can be held accountable and victims can receive justice. Its findings can be used by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court, or in other jurisdictions around the world, to argue that there is a legal basis for prosecuting those responsible. This is slow, painstaking work. It involves interviewing survivors, examining medical records, analyzing satellite images, and trying to establish not only what happened but why it happened, and who gave the orders. For families who have lost loved ones, the process is not a substitute for mourning, but it is a path toward recognition. When a court declares that a crime has been committed, it says to the victims: you were not wrong, your pain was not imagined, and your life mattered. Justice is a word that is easy to say and difficult to deliver, but this report is an attempt to place the suffering of ordinary Palestinians in the context of international law, where it cannot be dismissed as collateral damage or the unfortunate cost of war. It may be years before any of this moves through the courts, and there is no guarantee of success. But the act of bearing witness is itself a form of resistance. The world has a long history of looking away from atrocity. This report is designed to make looking away harder.
At its core, the report repeats a charge that Israel has refused to accept: that it is “continuing to commit genocidal acts with the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza.” The commission said much of the harm has come from Israel’s expansion deeper into Gaza during the ceasefire period. When the ceasefire was signed, Israeli forces controlled about 53 percent of Gaza. Now, the commission says, they control at least 60 percent. That expansion has been accompanied by deadly fire. At least 196 Palestinians have been killed across the advancing front, according to the commission, and among them are 18 women, 32 boys, and 11 girls. Every one of those numbers hides a story. Maybe a boy who loved soccer, a girl who dreamed of becoming a doctor, a mother who was killed while trying to protect her children. When a child is killed, the entire future is killed with them. The shrinking map of Gaza is not just a strategic fact; it is a daily experience. People are being pushed into smaller and smaller areas, forced to move again and again, never able to feel safe. The report says this is not an accident. It says the intent is to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinian population. Those are terrible words, and they are fought over by lawyers and governments. But for the people living through the destruction, the intent is visible in the bombs that fall on homes, the tanks that roll into neighborhoods, and the expanding lines of control that leave no room for a normal life. They do not need a legal judgment to know what is happening to them. They need the world to recognize it, and to stop it.
The ceasefire came after a long and devastating war, one that began with the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, when militants crossed the border and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took 251 hostages. Israel answered with a campaign that has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The suffering is not one-sided, and any honest account must acknowledge the horror of the attacks on Israeli civilians and the fear of the hostages and their families. But the report insists that the suffering of Palestinians has been both catastrophic and criminal—not a tragic byproduct of war, but a systematic pattern that continued even after a ceasefire was supposed to end the worst of it. The commission’s language of genocide and crimes against humanity will be debated, denied, and defended for years. But behind the legal terms are simple human realities: a pregnant woman forced to relive the shame of being violated, a young man whose body was turned into a weapon against himself, families burying children whose only crime was being born in the wrong place. Maybe the world is tired of this story, but tiredness is not a moral argument. The report does not offer a solution. It does not end the occupation, release the prisoners, or restore the dead. But it leaves the world with a question that cannot be escaped. If this is not justice, what is? If these acts are not crimes, what are? And if the international community refuses to act on the evidence it has been given, what reason will future generations have to believe that human rights are anything more than words? For now, the ceasefire holds, but the violence continues. For Palestinians, the hope is that the world will finally look, truly look, and find the courage to respond.