UN Commission of Inquiry Says Gaza Genocide Continues

A new report from the UN Commission of Inquiry landed on Monday with a blunt conclusion: the Gaza ceasefire that was supposed to stop the killing has not ended what investigators call genocidal acts. The three-member body also accused Israeli forces of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the West Bank, and Israel immediately fired back, calling the whole thing a smear.

The findings were submitted to the UN General Assembly and published the same day. According to CBC News, citing Reuters, the commission said Israeli authorities had kept committing "genocidal acts with the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza" after last October's US-brokered truce. Israel dismissed the report as part of a "misinformation campaign."

What the investigators say happened in Gaza

The central claim is that the ceasefire changed the pace of the war but not its direction. The report argues that Israel has pushed its zone of control deeper into the territory since the truce began. According to The National, the commission found Israeli forces expanded control from fifty-three percent of Gaza to at least sixty percent.

That expansion matters because of the so-called Yellow Line, the boundary between Israeli-held areas and the rest of the strip. The commission's chair, Srinivasan Muralidhar, said the push "continues to result in the killing and harming of Palestinian civilians who approach or cross the Yellow Line." The report counts at least one hundred ninety-six Palestinians killed along that advancing front, including forty-three children.

Those figures sit alongside a bigger toll. The Palestinian Ministry of Health says more than one thousand four hundred Palestinians have died in Gaza in the year since the ceasefire took effect, as reported by The National. Israel disputes the genocide label and says it strikes militants and responds to ceasefire violations.

The West Bank section is just as heavy

Gaza gets most of the headlines, but the UN Commission of Inquiry spends a lot of the report on the occupied West Bank. Investigators say military operations, reinforced by sustained settler violence, amount to a widespread and systematic attack on civilians. They list extermination, persecution, torture, rape and other sexual violence as crimes against humanity.

One number stands out. According to the UN human rights office, airstrikes killed six Palestinians in the West Bank between two thousand eight and the start of October two thousand twenty-three. Between then and the end of September this year, airstrikes killed two hundred fifty-four. That is a jump of dozens of times over, in a territory that was not supposed to be a front line.

The commission also documented the displacement of thirty-four thousand one hundred seventy-six Palestinians as of August, which it describes as the largest displacement in the West Bank since nineteen sixty-seven. The report says the targeting is tied to nationality, race, ethnicity, gender and age, and that children have been deliberately killed and seriously harmed there, as in Gaza.

Israel's response and the pushback on the Palestinian Authority

Israel's mission in Geneva did not just reject the findings. It called for the commission to be dissolved and said on social media that the report was a "misinformation campaign to demonise the state of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal." Israel has long denied allegations of genocide and of sexual violence by its forces.

The report is not only aimed at Israel. The commission says the Palestinian Authority has targeted Palestinians who voice dissenting views and has failed to carry out effective and impartial investigations into killings. It calls on the authority to stop targeting human rights defenders and to provide remedies to victims.

Why this report carries weight, and its limits

The commission was created by the UN Human Rights Council in two thousand twenty-one. It first concluded in September two thousand twenty-five that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, and this latest report builds directly on that finding. Its former chair, Navi Pillay, won the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, which put extra spotlight on the body just as it released new conclusions.

There is a catch. As The National notes, the commission has no power to prosecute anyone. Its work is meant to document alleged crimes in detail so the evidence can be used later in international criminal proceedings and other courts. Its recommendations are blunt: Israel should follow the International Court of Justice advisory opinion from July two thousand twenty-four, end the occupation, remove settlers and settlements, and return confiscated land.

For young people watching this unfold online, the gap between legal findings and daily reality is the story. A ceasefire can lower the volume of the war, but investigators say the killing, the land grabs and the displacement kept going underneath it. Expect more fights at the UN over whether the commission survives, and over what any of this changes on the ground. For more coverage, see the world desk and the politics coverage.