UN-backed inquiry accuses Israel of ‘extermination’ in West Bank

The UN commission highlights a sharp deterioration in the situation in the West Bank since October 7, 2023. Keystone

An international commission of inquiry mandated by the United Nations accused Israel on Monday of committing crimes against humanity against Palestinians in the West Bank, including extermination, torture and persecution. It also upheld its allegations of genocide in Gaza.

Israel immediately rejected the report’s findings through its ambassador in Geneva, who denounced an “attempt to destroy the Jewish state” and to “deny its fundamental right to exist”.

Established in 2021, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded last year that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza – allegations which the Israeli authorities dismiss as “false” and “anti-Semitic”, as they do the new allegations of crimes against humanity in the West Bank.

In its new report, published just before the Israeli general election scheduled for Tuesday, the commission “concludes that the Israeli authorities and forces have committed crimes against humanity in the West Bank, including extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as persecution, based on intersecting discriminatory grounds, at the heart of which lie nationality, race and ethnicity”.

Deteriorating situation in West Bank

On September 4, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had already accused Israel of forcibly displacing more than 33,000 Palestinians from three camps in the West Bank in early 2025, raising the possibility of a crime against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. More than three million Palestinians live there, alongside 500,000 Israelis in settlements deemed illegal under international law, amidst a climate of heightened violence on both sides, which has become even more tense in the run-up to the Israeli general election.

Since the unprecedented fatal attacks carried out by the Palestinian group Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza, the expansion of settlement activity in the West Bank has been evident in the rapid increase in the establishment of “outposts”.

The UN commission highlights a sharp deterioration in the situation in the West Bank since October 7, 2023: while six Palestinians were killed by air strikes between 2008 and October 6, 2023, 254 were killed between October 7, 2023 and September 30, 2026.

‘Demonisation’

In Geneva, the Israeli mission to the UN condemned the commission’s report, stating that it constitutes “yet another manifestation of its disinformation campaign aimed at demonising the State of Israel and portraying its very existence as criminal”.

‘The attempt to destroy the Jewish state did not end in 1948. It continues today through the efforts of actors such as the UN Commission of Inquiry, which seeks to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and deny its fundamental right to exist and to defend itself,’ said Israeli Ambassador Daniel Meron.

The Israeli mission is calling on the international community to demand the “immediate dissolution” of the commission of inquiry, whose former chair is the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the South African lawyer Navi Pillay.

‘Collective punishment’

In its new report, the commission concludes that the Israeli authorities sought to “collectively punish” the civilian population of the West Bank in response to the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.

According to the commission, Israel has since that date been conducting “a widespread and systematic attack against civilians, through military operations reinforced by persistent violence by settlers”.

However, “the intentional killing and wounding of Palestinian civilians, as well as the destruction of homes in the West Bank, combined with Israel’s persistent denial of responsibility, form part of a broader strategy aimed at exterminating and displacing Palestinians and imposing unsustainable living conditions upon them”, said the commission’s new chair, Srinivasan Muralidhar of India in a statement.

Deaths despite a truce

“At the same time, Israel’s expansion of its territorial control over Gaza continues to cause deaths and injuries amongst Palestinian civilians who approach or cross the yellow line [which marks the boundary of the area under Israeli military control],” he said.

More than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed since the October 2025 ceasefire, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is under Hamas’s authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

In a landmark ruling in January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) called on Israel to prevent any act of genocide in Gaza, warning of a “real and imminent risk” of “irreparable harm” to Palestinians.

The report also condemns the Palestinian Authority’s violence against members of rival armed groups and its repression of civilian and political opponents. It further criticises the Authority for failing to conduct prompt, effective and impartial investigations into such acts of violence.

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Translated from French, reviewed by an English Department journalist. 

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