Gaza Herald — In a damning landmark report submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that Israeli occupation forces continue to perpetrate acts of genocide in Gaza while escalating a widespread, systematic military attack against Palestinian civilians across the occupied West Bank.
The independent panel of experts documented an unrelenting pattern of deliberate killings, aerial bombardments, torture, and mass land confiscations designed to enforce an enclave-wide strategy of physical destruction, displacement, and colonial subjugation.
The Commission’s findings highlight a severe deterioration in the West Bank, where Israeli occupation forces have dramatically intensified the use of lethal military air power against civilian populations. According to official data compiled by the UN panel, while six Palestinians were killed in West Bank airstrikes between 2008 and October 6, 2023, Israeli forces killed 254 Palestinians in aerial bombardments between October 7, 2023, and September 30, 2026.
The report confirmed that Palestinians across the West Bank are systematically targeted based on their nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, and age, explicitly concluding that Israeli forces deliberately execute and maim Palestinian children in acts constituting age-based persecution.
Furthermore, the UN inquiry documented that ongoing military offensives launched since January 2025 have triggered the largest wave of internal displacement in the West Bank since the 1967 war, leaving at least 34,176 Palestinians permanently displaced as of August 2026. Working in coordination with state-backed settler militias, Israeli occupation authorities have waged a systematic assault featuring widespread torture, reproductive violence, rape, and sexual assault designed to destabilize, terrorize, and forcibly expel Palestinian communities from their ancestral lands.
Continued Genocidal Operations in Gaza Behind Ceasefire Rhetoric
Addressing the situation in the Gaza Strip, the UN Commission concluded that Israeli military forces continue to execute acts of genocide under the guise of the so-called ceasefire agreement, operating with the explicit intent to destroy the Palestinian population in whole or in part. Commission Chair Srinivasan Muralidhar stated that the intentional slaughter of civilians, the destruction of residential infrastructure, and the continuous expansion of military buffer zones, where civilians approaching the arbitrary “Yellow Line” are summarily killed, form part of a broader strategy to impose unlivable conditions and eliminate Palestinian life.
Muralidhar emphasized that Israel’s relentless territorial expansion and population reduction stem directly from long-standing settler-colonial policies rooted in historical practices of mass displacement and generational killing. The Commission Chair added that Israeli political attempts to frame Palestinian statehood and self-determination as an existential threat serve only to justify permanent military occupation, total siege, and the systematic denial of the Palestinian people’s inherent right to national liberation.
Accountability Demands and Suppression of Palestinian Civic Space
Beyond its extensive documentation of Israeli war crimes, the Commission report noted that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has actively restricted civic space by targeting human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissenters. The report highlighted that the PA security apparatus failed to conduct independent or impartial investigations into the killing and injury of political critics, denying victims and their families legal remedies or financial restitution.
To halt further genocidal violence, the UN Commission issued binding recommendations demanding that international state actors compel Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion of July 2024. The panel called for the immediate, unconditional end of Israel’s illegal occupation, the total dismantling of all illegal settlements, the full evacuation of Israeli settlers, the return of confiscated Palestinian properties, and an immediate international embargo to prevent further war crimes across the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
