A ceasefire agreement in Gaza has not stopped what a group of independent experts commissioned by the UN say is genocide carried out by Israel in the territory, the team said in a new report on Monday (October 26, 2026). They also accused Israeli forces of crimes against humanity, including torture and rape, in the West Bank.
Report points to Israel’s deeper expansion into Gaza
The findings by the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which seeks to document in minute detail the allegations and evidence of crimes to bolster accountability for perpetrators, 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 report on Monday (October 26) said Israel was “continuing to commit genocidal acts with the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza. Since October 2025, when the ceasefire was signed, Israeli forces have gone from controlling 53% of Gaza to at least 60%, the commission said. The ceasefire scaled down a devastating war started by the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, when the militants killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. Israel responded with a campaign that has killed over 74,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Much of the harm has come, the report says, from Israel’s expansion deeper into Gaza during that period. The commission said that it had recently documented six cases where Israeli guards were sexually violent toward male detainees from Gaza in the Sde Teiman military prison. In one case, it says guards raped a Palestinian detainee.
