Israel has committed the crime against humanity of "extermination" in the occupied West Bank, while continuing to commit "genocide" against Palestinians in besieged Gaza, United Nations-mandated investigators said.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry said on Monday that Israeli occupational troops had also committed other crimes against humanity and war crimes in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
The commission first determined in a September 2025 report that Israel had committed "genocide" in Gaza and that top Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu incited these acts.
In a new report, which comes the day before Israel's general election, the investigation found that in the occupied West Bank, through military incursions reinforced by sustained illegal settler attacks, 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.
The three-member investigative UN 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 Israeli forces since October 2023.
It found that the situation in the occupied West Bank has deteriorated gravely since 2023.
'Unliveable' conditions
The commission found that the Israeli authorities "intended to collectively punish" occupied West Bank civilians due to the October 7 blitz.
"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 occupied 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 willful killing.
Military incursions since January 2025 have led to the largest displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 1967, with 34,176 Palestinians remaining displaced as of August 2026, the report said.
Findings on genocide
Since 2023, Israel's military has uprooted nearly the entire population of Gaza and killed more than 74,200 people, according to Gaza's health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.
However, experts and studies indicate that the death toll is an undercount, with the actual figure potentially reaching 200,000 in Gaza, 60 percent of which remains under Israeli occupation.
"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.
The commission found that Israeli forces continued using heavy munitions, drones, quadcopters, artillery and sniper fire in densely populated areas during the ceasefire in Gaza.
It said the "Yellow Line" which was presented as a temporary ceasefire demarcation, was encroaching increasingly into Gaza, and becoming a de facto border, which the report said reflected Israel’s expanding territorial invasion of Gaza.
