UN report exposes brutal reality for Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank

An inquiry found that civilians were being ‘systematically’ subjected to severe rights violations by Israeli forces, settlers and Hamas

Palestinian civilians are caught between “mass atrocities” of Israeli forces, settlers and Hamas’ brutal rule, a UN-mandated inquiry said on Tuesday.

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

The investigative team, which last year concluded that Israel had committed “genocide” in the war in Gaza, highlighted in a new report that 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’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war, it described how Palestinian civilians were increasingly targeted by Israeli settler attacks.

“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.