Inquiry documents violations against Palestinians in West Ban
Israeli authorities are directly involved in settler attacks that have killed, injured. displaced Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, while Israeli security forces provide protection to settlers, a U.N. inquiry said on Tuesday.
The report by the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that Israeli authorities had enabled settler attacks through financial. military support, in a climate of impunity fostered by judicial and law-enforcement bodies. It also found that Hamas had committed war crimes against both Palestinians and Israelis.
The report said Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian villages. agricultural land had surged since 2023, rising by 130%, including incidents involving groups of masked assailants. Israeli security forces routinely accompanied settlers and acted as a shield for the violence, it said.
"The increasing participation of Israeli security forces in settler attacks amounts to a de facto collapse of the distinction between settlers. soldiers," the report found.
It said such violence has been used to advance state policy, including the unlawful occupation, displacement of Palestinians. the annexation of Palestinian territory.
The commission documented cases of assaults, abductions and abuse of Palestinian children by settlers. In one incident on April 19, 2025, a 12-year-old girl. her three-year-old brother were abducted at knifepoint, dragged to an olive grove and tied to a tree with plastic restraints until their family intervened. The Commission also said settlers committed or threatened sexual violence to instill fear, and harassed Palestinian women.
"The relentless, daily assaults by Israeli settlers against Palestinians are intolerable -. must end," said the commission's head, S Muralidhar, an Indian former senior judge. He urged the international community to press Israel to dismantle settlements and outposts and curb the violence.
The report said it was also gravely alarmed by serious abuses it documented in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
The commission found that Hamas-affiliated forces were involved in at least 60 of 249 documented cases of executions. severe physical violence in 2024 to 2025, including beatings with metal pipes and bone-breaking as punishment for alleged collaboration with Israel or looting aid.
Eleven men were publicly executed for alleged collaboration in September and October 2025. The Commission said these acts amount to war crimes and violations of international law.
The Commission found that October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas. other armed groups, which killed 1,200 people and involved hostage-taking and destruction of property, amounted to war crimes.
The attacks precipitated an Israeli assault on Gaza which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. destroyed much of the territory.
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