The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said in a report published on Monday that Israeli authorities had kept committing genocidal acts with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza, after the United States brokered ceasefire that began in October 2025, Reuters reported. The report examined violations against Palestinian children from the start of the war on October 7, 2023 up to September this year.
The commission found that Israeli forces continued using heavy munitions, drones, quadcopters, artillery and sniper fire in densely populated areas during the ceasefire. Sky News reported the commission’s figure of 1,431 people killed since the ceasefire began, including at least 300 children and 130 women. The report said the Yellow Line, presented as a temporary ceasefire demarcation, was encroaching into Gaza and becoming a de facto border, with at least nine new military bases fortifying it, and that Israeli controlled areas had expanded from the 53 percent first envisaged under the ceasefire to at least 60 percent.
On the West Bank, the report accused Israeli soldiers and prison guards of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination, torture, rape and other sexual violence and persecution against civilians, and said the situation there had deteriorated gravely. Commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar said the intentional killing and injuring of Palestinian civilians and destruction of homes in the West Bank formed part of a broader strategy. The report also criticised the Palestinian Authority for targeting people with dissenting views.
Israel rejected the report outright. Its mission in Geneva called it part of a misinformation campaign to demonise the State of Israel, and Ambassador Daniel Meron said the attempt to destroy the Jewish state continues through efforts by actors such as the commission to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and deny its right to exist and defend itself. Israel has previously denied genocide, said it acts in response to Hamas ceasefire breaches, and said it does all it can to avoid civilian casualties. The three person commission, created in 2021, does not speak for the UN’s member states collectively, and its findings are conclusions of the commission, not a court judgment.