Palestinians 'trapped' between Israeli forces, settlers and Hamas: UN probe

GENEVA (AFP) — Palestinian civilians are caught between “mass atrocities” of Israeli forces, settlers and Hamas’ brutal rule, a U.N.-mandated inquiry said Tuesday.

Civilians across war-ravaged Gaza and the occupied West Bank are being “systematically and deliberately” subjected to severe rights violations, the U.N.’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry said.

The investigative team last year concluded that Israel had committed “genocide” in the war in Gaza — a finding flatly rejected by Israel.

In a new report, the commission said civilians in the territory were also being “violently repressed and controlled by the very faction that claims to govern them.”

In the Gaza Strip, “ordinary Palestinians find themselves trapped between the structural violence and mass atrocities of Israeli forces and the predatory, fear-based rule of Hamas,” the report said.

And in the West Bank, which has seen soaring violence since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war, it said Palestinian civilians were increasingly targeted by Israeli settler attacks.

‘Deliberate infliction of suffering’

“Violence by settlers is the direct outcome of Israeli policies that support, enable and protect their actions,” commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar said in a statement.

Hamas-affiliated forces, he added, had meanwhile “exploited the vacuum created by relentless Israeli attacks and widespread destruction of Gaza.”

“What is alarmingly similar is the deliberate infliction of suffering on Palestinian civilians. While their origins and motivations differ, both operate within environments engineered by Israel,” said Muralidhar, an Indian judge.

Israel has long been harshly critical of the three-person commission, which was established by the U.N. Human Rights Council in May 2021 to probe rights violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Israel’s mission in Geneva said the new report “seeks to create a false equivalence between Hamas terrorists and Israeli civilians,” accusing the investigators of “spreading misinformation and manipulating reality to serve political agendas.”

West Bank violence

Tuesday’s report focused heavily on the situation in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967.

In the territory, Israeli soldiers or settlers have killed at least 1,080 Palestinians since October 2023, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry data.

The inquiry said that at least 26 Palestinians were killed and at least 1,570 were injured by settlers between January 2023 and December 2025.

“This trend continues in 2026 with attacks carried out on a daily basis,” the investigators said.

They also said that, in addition to those killed on Oct. 7, 2023, a total of 60 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians in the period 2023 to 2025, including 42 in the West Bank, of whom 36 were settlers.

The report concluded that Israel was enabling the settler violence, which “functions as a means of implementing Israeli state policy,” and was aimed at “entrenchment of Israeli settlements, annexation of Palestinian territory and displacement of Palestinians.”

The report, which will be presented to the rights council on Monday, said Israel must “immediately end the unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory” and remove all settlers and settlements.

Torture in Gaza hospital

The Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory response in Gaza has killed at least 72,800 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority.

The commission determined that Hamas-affiliated forces were responsible for serious rights abuses, including the “war crimes of murder and torture” in Gaza.

Looking at the killing and harm of Palestinians caused by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, it identified 249 cases of executions and severe physical violence in 2024-2025, resulting in at least 108 deaths and 384 people injured.

The investigators said that among other things that Hamas members had “tortured Palestinian civilians in the Nasser Medical Complex” in Gaza.

It stressed though that such conduct “does not result in the loss of special protection of the hospital against attacks under international humanitarian law.”

The commission recommended “that the de facto authorities in Gaza immediately stop all extrajudicial punishments of civilians, including executions, torture, and mental, physical and sexual violence.”

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By Agence France-Presse