GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP): Israel has committed the crime against humanity of "extermination" in the West Bank, while continuing to commit "genocide" against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, United Nations-mandated investigators said Monday.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry said Israeli forces had also committed other crimes against humanity and war crimes in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
The commission, which does not speak for the UN itself, first determined in a September 2025 report that Israel had committed "genocide" in the war in Gaza following Hamas' deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel - a finding Israel flatly rejects.
In a new report -- which comes the day before Israel's general election -- the investigation found that in the West Bank, through military operations reinforced by sustained settler violence, Israel has waged a "widespread and systematic attack" against civilians.
"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," it said.
Israel's mission in Geneva said the report was part of the inquiry's "misinformation campaign to demonise the State of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal".
"The international community must reject these distortions, repudiate the commission's findings and demand its immediate dissolution," it said in a statement.
The three-member investigative team was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021.
South African former High Court judge Navi Pillay, who chaired the investigation until November 2025, won the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month.
The commission's new report focused on killings and bodily and mental harm caused by both Israeli and Palestinian security forces since October 2023.
It found that the situation in the West Bank has deteriorated gravely since the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas's attack from Gaza that month.
- 'Unliveable' conditions of life -
The commission found that the Israeli authorities "intended to collectively punish" West Bank civilians due to the Hamas attack.
"The targeting of Palestinian civilians across different locations in the West Bank indicates a high level of coordination and organised planning and is the product of state policy," the report said.
The conduct of Israeli authorities indicates that "they knew and intended settler violence" to be part of the widespread and systematic attack in the West Bank, it added.
"The intentional killing and injuring of Palestinian civilians and destruction of homes in the West Bank combined with Israel's persistent denial of responsibility form part of a broader strategy to exterminate and displace Palestinians and impose conditions of life that are unliveable," said commission chairman Srinivasan Muralidhar.
"Attempting to equate Palestinian statehood with a threat to the existence of Israel is blocking any viable attempts to realise Palestinians' right to self-determination," the Indian judge said in a statement.
The report cited cases where the commission concluded that Israeli forces intended to seriously harm and kill civilians, in acts which amount to war crimes including wilful killing.
- Findings on genocide -
The Hamas attack in October 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel's military offensive, in response, has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza and killed more than 74,200 people, according to Gaza's health ministry, which is under Hamas authority but whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.
"The cases investigated for this report show that the Israeli authorities and forces continue to commit genocidal acts with the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza," the report said.
The inquiry urged Israel to "end the commission of genocide in Gaza" and act immediately on "obligations to prevent and punish genocide and incitement to genocide".
Israel should "immediately end the unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory", and remove all settlers and settlements.
- PA 'targets' dissenters -
Turning to the Palestinian Authority, the report said that "Palestinian state violence has targeted and continues to target members of opposing Palestinian armed groups and repress Palestinian civil and political opposition".
The Palestinian Authority struggles with credibility and legitimacy, and "targets Palestinians who voice dissenting civil and political views... resulting in killings", it said.
"The Palestinian Authority has also failed to conduct prompt, effective and impartial investigations into incidents of killings."
There was no immediate reaction from the Palestinian Authority.
The commission is due to present its report to the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday. -- AFP
