UN experts say Israel still committing genocide in Gaza

Jerusalem — A ceasefire in Gaza has not stopped what a group of independent experts commissioned by the United Nations says is genocide carried out by Israel in the territory, the team said in a report released on Monday. The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said Israel was “continuing to commit genocidal acts with the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza”.

Much of the harm stems from Israel’s expansion deeper into Gaza during the ceasefire period, the report said, according to CNA. Since October 2025, when the ceasefire was signed, Israeli forces have gone from controlling 53 per cent of Gaza to at least 60 per cent, the commission said. In that time, Israeli fire across the advancing front has killed at least 196 Palestinians, including 18 women, 32 boys and 11 girls, it added.

The panel also accused Israeli soldiers and prison guards of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the West Bank, including extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence and persecution against civilians. The commission said it had recently documented six cases of sexual violence by guards against male detainees from Gaza. The Associated Press said it could not independently corroborate multiple accounts of sexual assaults on Palestinian detainees since October 2023 described in the report.

Israel rejected the findings outright. Its mission in Geneva called for the commission’s dissolution and said on X the report was an example of the body’s “misinformation campaign to demonise the state of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal”. Israel has long criticised the commission’s output and denies accusations of genocide in Gaza and of sexual assault by its forces, The New York Times reported.

The commission, which seeks to document allegations and evidence of crimes in minute detail to bolster accountability, said its findings could be used by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court or in other jurisdictions to try to bring justice to victims and their relatives.

The immediate test is legal and financial: whether ICC prosecutors act on the commission’s dossier, and whether Israel’s backers face renewed pressure over arms sales and trade ties. With the front line still moving and casualty figures mounting under a nominal truce, the ceasefire’s survival — and the next filings in The Hague — will show whether the report changes any government’s calculus.