UN Investigators Allege 'Crimes Against Humanity' by Israel in Occupied West Bank

United Nations-mandated investigators have reported 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 on Monday that the Israeli government and its forces are also accountable for other war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Palestinian territory, encompassing torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence.

This report's release coincided with Israeli forces implementing a crackdown, involving expulsions and demolitions, on Hebron following a gun attack the previous week. The commission, which does not represent the UN itself, had previously determined in a September 2025 report that Israel had committed "genocide" in its war on Gaza after Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel – a finding Israel has vehemently rejected.

In its latest report, issued just before Israel's general election, the commission found that in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, Israeli military operations, amplified by persistent settler violence, constitute a "widespread and systematic attack" against civilians. The report stated, "The Israeli authorities and forces have committed the crimes against humanity of extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence in the West Bank, as well as persecution based on intersecting discriminatory grounds, with nationality, race and ethnicity at its core."

Israel's mission in Geneva responded by calling the report part of the inquiry's "misinformation campaign to demonise the State of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal." The mission added, "The international community must reject these distortions, repudiate the commission’s findings and demand its immediate dissolution."

The three-member UN investigative team was 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, was a Nobel Peace Prize winner earlier this month.

The commission's new report focuses on killings and bodily and mental harm inflicted by both Israeli and Palestinian security forces since October 2023. It concluded that the situation in the occupied West Bank has severely deteriorated since the Hamas attack from Gaza in October 2023. The commission found that Israeli authorities "intended to collectively punish" West Bank civilians because of the Hamas attack.

According to Gaza's Health Ministry, Israel's military offensive on Gaza has displaced almost the entire population and resulted in over 74,500 deaths. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that between October 7, 2023, and October 9, 2026, 1,143 Palestinians, including at least 250 children, were killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.