UN probe claims Israel committing ‘extermination’ in West Bank; Israel: A demonization campaign

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 claim.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry says Israeli forces have also committed other crimes against humanity and war crimes in the West Bank.

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’s onslaught of October 7, 2023 — a finding Israel flatly rejects.

In a new report — which comes the day before Israel’s general election — the investigation finds 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 contends.

Israel’s mission in Geneva says the report is part of the inquiry’s “misinformation campaign to demonize 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 says 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, which prompted a fierce backlash from Jerusalem.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.