United Nations-mandated investigators reported on Monday that Israel has committed crimes against humanity, including extermination, in the occupied West Bank. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory stated that the Israeli government and its forces bear responsibility for war crimes in the territory.
These violations include torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence. The release of the findings on Monday coincided with an Israeli military clampdown on Hebron that involved demolitions and expulsions following a gun attack the previous week.
The commission stated that Israeli military operations, alongside sustained settler violence, form a widespread and systematic attack against civilians. The investigation panel previously concluded in a September 2025 report that Israel had committed genocide during its war on Gaza following the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas. Israel flatly rejects those findings.
The new report was issued just a day before a general election in Israel. Investigators said the state intended to collectively punish West Bank civilians for the Hamas-led assault from Gaza. They detailed crimes of persecution rooted in nationality, race, and ethnicity.
Israel rejected the conclusions in a statement from its mission in Geneva. The mission called the report part of an ongoing misinformation campaign aimed at demonising the state and criminalising its existence. It urged the international community to reject the distortions and demand the immediate dissolution of the commission.
The three-member investigative team operates under a mandate established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021. Navi Pillay, a former South African High Court judge who chaired the investigation until November 2025, received the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month.
The latest document focuses on killings and bodily and mental harm inflicted by both Israeli and Palestinian security forces since October 2023. Investigators reported that conditions in the occupied West Bank have deteriorated gravely since the Hamas attack from Gaza.
The Gaza offensive has displaced nearly the entire population of that territory and killed more than 74,500 people, according to figures from Gaza’s Health Ministry. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, UN humanitarian officials documented 1,143 Palestinian deaths, including at least 250 children, between October 7, 2023, and October 9, 2026.
