A United Nations-appointed investigative body has issued a new and deeply contentious report accusing Israel of committing crimes against humanity, including “extermination,” in the West Bank—referred to throughout the document as Judea and Samaria—while also renewing its earlier, explosive allegation that Israel has been carrying out genocide in the Gaza Strip. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel released its findings on Monday, claiming that Israeli military operations in the West Bank since Hamas’s devastating October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel amount to what it called a “widespread and systematic attack” on Palestinian Arab civilians. The commission, which was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 and does not speak on behalf of the United Nations itself, accused Israeli authorities and security forces of a range of grave abuses: extermination, torture, rape, other forms of sexual violence, and persecution rooted in nationality, race, and ethnicity. It went further, alleging that Israeli authorities deliberately incorporated violence committed by Jewish residents of the West Bank into what the report describes as a broader policy aimed at displacing Palestinian Arabs. The commission also attempted to link Israel’s current security policies to the events surrounding the country’s establishment in 1948, asserting that successive Israeli governments have pursued a continuing policy of territorial expansion and Palestinian displacement. These are not merely legalistic accusations; if taken at face value, they describe a deliberate campaign to uproot an entire population. Yet the report is built almost entirely on allegations, and Israel has rejected it with unusual force and clarity, calling it a fabrication designed to delegitimize the Jewish state and to rewrite the history of its creation as inherently criminal.
The Israeli response to the commission’s report was swift and unequivocal. The Israeli Mission to the United Nations in Geneva issued a statement describing the findings as “yet another manifestation of its misinformation campaign to demonize the State of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal.” The mission went further, saying the report “fundamentally distorts history, recasting Israel’s defensive war for survival following the invasion by five Arab armies in May 1948 as a colonial ‘expulsion’ policy.” That point is central to Israel’s indignation. The founding of the state was not a quiet, unopposed event; it came amid an existential war, and Israel’s perspective is that its survival then and now has required defending itself against enemies who refused to accept its right to exist. Israeli Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Daniel Meron echoed that sentiment, saying, “The attempt to destroy the Jewish state did not end in 1948. It continues today through efforts by actors such as the UN Commission of Inquiry to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and deny its fundamental right to exist and defend itself.” The mission also accused the commission of squandering substantial UN resources on misinformation, historical revisionism, and extremist ideologies, and concluded with a blunt demand: “The international community must reject these distortions, repudiate the Commission’s findings and demand its immediate dissolution.” For Israel, this report is not an honest accounting of wrongdoing but another front in what its leaders describe as an ongoing political and legal war against the country’s very legitimacy. The vehemence of the response reflects how seriously the government views the commission’s influence, especially as international legal bodies show increasing willingness to examine the conduct of Israeli officials.
Turning to the specifics of the West Bank allegations, the commission claims to have investigated seven cases and documented six additional cases involving Palestinian Arabs killed or injured between November 2023 and June 2026. The investigators alleged that Israeli security personnel intentionally killed civilians who posed no immediate threat, and they challenged Israeli military explanations for several incidents, asserting that security forces were operating under increasingly permissive rules of engagement. That is a serious charge: that soldiers and officers on the ground may have used lethal force without the justification that international law requires. The report also singled out Operation Iron Wall, the Israel Defense Forces counterterrorism operation launched in January 2025, claiming that military activity in Jenin, Tulkarm, and other parts of northern Samaria resulted in widespread destruction and the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs. The commission described a shift toward the extensive destruction of housing and infrastructure in Arab refugee camps, even while acknowledging that the IDF has explained these operations as necessary efforts to dismantle terrorist infrastructure and restore operational freedom for Israeli forces, which have faced repeated attacks from armed groups based in those areas. The language of the report is deliberately heavy and unforgiving, but behind it lies a human reality of demolished homes, disrupted lives, and families torn apart by years of conflict. Israel’s counterargument is equally human in its own way: its citizens have been murdered, wounded, and terrorized by gunmen and bombers operating from these very neighborhoods, and its soldiers have the duty to stop those threats. The commission’s report does not deny the existence of armed Palestinian groups, but it insists that Israel’s response has gone beyond legitimate counterterrorism and into the territory of collective punishment and even ethnic cleansing. Those are terms that carry enormous weight, yet the report presents them as conclusions drawn from observed patterns of behavior rather than isolated incidents.
In Gaza, the commission repeated its earlier accusation that Israel has committed genocide during the war that erupted after Hamas’s October 7 attack—an allegation Israel has consistently and categorically rejected, pointing to its efforts to avoid civilian harm and its claim that Hamas deliberately embeds its military operations within civilian areas. The commission first made that determination in September 2025, and its latest report alleges that Israeli military operations following the October 2025 ceasefire demonstrate a continuation of what it describes as genocidal acts. The investigators examined Israeli airstrikes carried out in October 2025, as well as incidents involving Palestinian Arabs approaching or crossing the Yellow Line separating areas under Israeli military control from other parts of Gaza. The report acknowledges that Israel identified the sites struck during those October operations as terrorist targets and attributed additional military action to ceasefire violations by Hamas and other armed groups. Yet the commission nonetheless claims that the strikes and the expansion of Israeli-controlled territory show a continuing intention to destroy Palestinian Arab communities. It also renewed allegations of sexual violence and mistreatment involving Palestinian Arab detainees and participants in the 2025 Global Sumud Flotilla. The commission’s demands are sweeping: that Israel end what it characterizes as genocide in Gaza, withdraw from Palestinian territories, remove Jewish communities in the West Bank, and provide compensation to Palestinian Arabs harmed during military operations. It urges countries to investigate and prosecute suspected Israeli violations of international law and calls on the International Criminal Court prosecutor to examine the allegations in connection with existing and potential arrest warrants. What makes this particularly significant is that the commission is not merely issuing abstract human rights admonitions; it is actively feeding the ICC process, and its findings could carry weight in eventual prosecutions. For Israel and its supporters, this is a profoundly dangerous development, a campaign to criminalize the country’s very existence rather than to hold it to fair standards of conduct.
The report also directs sharp criticism at the Palestinian Authority, and here the commission cannot be accused of one-sidedness, even if its focus remains on Palestinian rights. The commission found that security forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank, have violated the rights of Palestinian Arabs through killings, excessive force, arbitrary detention, and the suppression of political dissent. According to the report, Palestinian security forces killed at least fourteen Palestinian Arabs, including two minors, between October 2023 and October 2025. The investigators point to Operation Protect the Homeland, a Palestinian Authority security operation launched against armed groups in Jenin in December 2024, and document cases in which security personnel allegedly killed or injured individuals who posed no immediate threat. One case is especially haunting: the killing of a female journalism student in Jenin in December 2024 who had reportedly published criticism of Palestinian security forces before her death. The commission accuses the Palestinian Authority of suppressing journalists, human rights activists, and political opponents, and of failing to properly investigate killings attributed to its own security personnel. It concludes that the PA has violated the right to life and personal security and has failed to provide effective remedies to victims and their families. The report calls on the Palestinian Authority to conduct independent investigations, prosecute those responsible for violations, and stop targeting journalists and human rights defenders. This section of the report may surprise some readers, because it suggests that the abuses documented in the West Bank are not solely the work of Israeli soldiers and settlers. Palestinian voices, including those of civil society, journalists, and ordinary families, have paid a heavy price at the hands of their own authorities as well. That does not diminish the commission’s accusations against Israel, but it complicates any simple narrative of victim and oppressor.
The commission is scheduled to present its report to the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday, a moment that is certain to generate further diplomatic friction. The timing of the report, released one day before Israel’s general election, also invites questions about political motivations, though the commission says its schedule was set by its own mandate. What remains clear is that this is not a neutral, universally accepted document; it is a deeply polarizing instrument in an already bitter conflict. The commission itself was created by a body, the UN Human Rights Council, that has a long history of disproportionate attention to Israel, and Israel and its allies argue that the entire mechanism is tainted from the start. Yet the report also contains uncomfortable findings about Palestinian Authority abuses, and its call for accountability is not limited to one side. For those who care about human rights, the challenge is to weigh the credibility of the accusations without dismissing the humanity of either victims or defenders. The report insists that Palestinian Arabs deserve protection from violence and displacement, whether at the hands of Israeli military operations, settler attacks, or their own security services. Israel insists that it has the right, like any sovereign state, to defend its citizens against terrorism and that accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing are not only false but malicious. In the end, the commission’s report is a document of allegations, not a judicial verdict, and it will be interpreted through the lens of deep political loyalties. What it cannot be denied is that it returns the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the center of international attention, with all its human tragedy, legal complexity, and unresolved suffering. The coming days will likely see further denunciations, further justifications, and perhaps further appeals for peace, but the underlying reality remains unchanged: ordinary people on both sides continue to live with fear, loss, and the urgent need for a future that no commission of inquiry alone can provide.