UN Panel Cites West Bank Extermination

A United Nations panel declared that Israel has committed crimes against humanity in the occupied West Bank, specifically citing extermination. The finding arrived on Monday, one day before Israeli voters head to the polls in a general election.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory issued the report while Israeli forces conducted a crackdown in Hebron. That operation included expulsions and demolitions following a gun attack the previous week. The commission, established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, stated that Israeli authorities and forces carried out widespread and systematic attacks on civilians.

The investigators linked the violence to the conflict that began after Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. They determined that the Israeli government intended to collectively punish West Bank residents for that assault. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 1,143 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between October 7, 2023, and October 9, 2026. At least 250 of the deceased were children.

The report identifies torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence as additional war crimes. It notes that persecution in the region is based on intersecting discriminatory grounds, with nationality, race, and ethnicity at the center. The commission also found that sustained settler violence reinforced these military operations.

Israel’s mission in Geneva rejected the findings immediately. It described the report as part of a misinformation campaign designed to demonize the state. The mission stated that the international community must repudiate the commission's conclusions and demand its immediate dissolution.

The panel is led by former South African High Court judge Navi Pillay, who won the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month. She chaired the investigation until November 2025. The group previously found that Israel committed genocide in Gaza in a September 2025 report, a determination Israel has consistently rejected.

Gaza's Health Ministry says the Israeli military offensive has displaced nearly the entire population and killed more than 74,500 people. The new West Bank report expands the scope of the inquiry to include bodily and mental harm caused by both Israeli and Palestinian security forces since late 2023.