UN inquiry finds Israeli forces shield settlers during attacks on Palestinians

A UN report says Palestinians are caught between the "mass atrocities of Israeli forces" and the "fear-based rule of Hamas". (Reuters: Ramadan Abed)

A UN probe finds that Palestinians are trapped between Israeli forces, settlers and Hamas.

The report by the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that Israeli authorities have enabled settler attacks through financial and military support.

Palestinians are trapped between Israeli forces, settlers and Hamas, a UN probe has found.

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.

It said 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.

Israeli air strikes have devastated Gaza. (Reuters: Dawoud Abu Alkas)

Palestinian civilians in the West Bank have increasingly been targeted by Israeli settler attacks since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war, the report found.

"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, Mr Muralidhar said, had meanwhile "exploited the vacuum created by relentless Israeli attacks and widespread destruction of Gaza".

The families of Palestinians believed to be trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings want to bury their dead.

"What is alarmingly similar is the deliberate infliction of suffering on Palestinian civilians," Mr Muralidhar said.

"While their origins and motivations differ, both operate within environments engineered by Israel."

The three-person commission was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate alleged rights violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

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.

Official Israeli figures show that at least 46 Israelis, both civilians and soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli m