UN inquiry finds Israel committed age-based persecution of Palestinian children in West Bank

The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, has released its fifth official report to the UN General Assembly on Monday, laying out damning new findings of systemic, state-backed abuses targeting Palestinian civilians across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, alongside confirmation that genocidal operations in Gaza have persisted even after the October 2025 ceasefire agreement. The panel, established to investigate human rights violations in the region since the 7 October 2023 outbreak of hostilities, concluded that Israeli state forces and governing bodies have perpetrated the crime against humanity of age-based persecution against Palestinian children in the West Bank, noting that deliberate fatal violence and severe bodily and psychological harm inflicted on minors is not a collateral side effect of broader military operations, but a pre-planned, repeated pattern of targeted abuse. Citing verified UN statistical records covering the period from 7 October 2023 through 30 September 2026, the report documents 1,080 Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), comprising 237 boys and 7 girls, alongside 10,940 recorded non-fatal injuries. The commission corroborated multiple high-profile, unprovoked attack cases through witness testimony, verified video footage, and physical forensics: in one 5 June 2026 incident in Hebron, a 7-month-old infant was shot in the head and killed, and both of her parents wounded, when an Israeli soldier fired two rounds into their vehicle without warning, even after the father had slowed, stopped the car, and raised his hands in clear surrender. The Israeli military’s initial claim that the vehicle had accelerated toward a Yehuda Brigade patrol was contradicted by the commission’s assessment that the soldier, positioned just 10 meters from the car, had an unobstructed view of all occupants. A second documented 15 March 2026 incident in Tubas Governorate’s Tammun town saw Israeli forces open fire on a vehicle carrying a family of six, killing both parents and their two youngest sons, before assaulting the two surviving, wounded teenage sons. The panel confirmed that no effective disciplinary, judicial, or investigative proceedings have been launched for any of the documented cases, with this total absence of accountability cementing a discriminatory institutional system that enables unpunished repeat abuses against Palestinian children. The report further establishes that Israeli military operations in the West Bank paired with state-sanctioned settler violence constitute a widespread, systematically coordinated attack on the civilian population, meeting the legal threshold for crimes against humanity. Commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar emphasized that this coordinated campaign reflects a deliberate policy of territorial expansion, noting that Israeli authorities have actively leveraged settler aggression to advance a broader strategy of civilian extermination, mass displacement, and imposition of unlivable living conditions for Palestinian communities. The inquiry also classifies the 2024 fatal shooting of Turkish-American dual national human rights activist Aysenur Eygi as a crime against humanity, confirming the soldier responsible intentionally targeted her because she was perceived as part of the Palestinian civilian population. Additional verified crimes against humanity committed by Israeli forces in the territory include extermination, torture, sexual violence including gang rape of a male detainee at Megiddo prison, and persecution on the basis of nationality, race, and ethnicity. The report documents that Israeli rules of engagement in the West Bank were drastically expanded after 7 October 2023 to allow near-unrestricted lethal force exclusively against Palestinian civilians, with explicit prohibitions on applying identical standards to Jewish Israeli individuals. Statements from senior Israeli officials corroborate this permissive framework: Central Command head Major General Avi Bluth publicly stated in May 2026 that Israeli troops were “killing like we haven’t since 1967”, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich issued multiple dehumanizing public remarks referring to West Bank Palestinians as “two million Nazis” who “have to pay a price” for permanent territorial annexation. The panel notes that Israeli airstrikes in the West Bank have killed 254 Palestinians since 7 October 2023, compared to a total of just six fatalities from such strikes in the 15-year period between 2008 and that date. The 2025-launched Israeli military operation codenamed Operation Iron Wall explicitly imported the Gaza territory’s “total destruction” operational model to the West Bank, triggering the largest mass displacement of Palestinian communities in the territory since the 1967 Six-Day War, with 34,176 people remaining displaced as of August 2026. Turning its findings to Gaza, the commission reaffirms its prior 2025 conclusion that Israel is perpetrating genocide against the Palestinian population in the enclave, and confirms that genocidal acts have continued in full force after the October 2025 ceasefire, with 1,431 civilian fatalities (including 300 children) and 5,026 recorded injuries in the post-ceasefire period alone. The report contradicts Israeli claims presented to the UN Security Council that the ceasefire had largely held, noting that the self-declared Israeli “Yellow Line” buffer zone has expanded Israeli-controlled territory in Gaza from 53% to 60% of the enclave as of September 2026, with 196 Palestinians killed near the encroaching boundary between October 2025 and April 2026. The panel also verified that sexual violence targeting participants of the 2025 Global Sumud Flotilla qualifies as crimes against humanity, including persecution on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, and political affiliation. While the report’s core findings focus on Israeli state abuses, it also documents violations committed by the Palestinian Authority, including the extrajudicial killing of a civilian at a Jenin checkpoint in December 2024 during the PA’s Operation Protect the Homeland, targeted harassment and fatal violence against dissenting journalists and human rights defenders, and a consistent failure to launch impartial, effective investigations into disproportionate use of force incidents against Palestinian civilians. The commission’s full evidence base was compiled using standardized, internationally accepted investigative protocols, drawing on verified witness testimony, digital video footage, open-source documentation, satellite imagery, and physical damage pattern analysis. While the State of Palestine submitted full responses to the panel’s two formal information requests, Israeli authorities refused all requests for information and repeatedly denied entry visas to commission members, barring the team from accessing Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza to conduct on-site field investigations. The panel has formally urged the International Criminal Court prosecutor to review all newly documented crimes, to amend existing active arrest warrants and file additional future warrant applications as appropriate. The ICC already issued 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and recently filed a new warrant application for Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich over apartheid and related abuses in the West Bank. The separate International Court of Justice is currently adjudicating the genocide convention violation case brought by South Africa against Israel over its Gaza military campaign.