Palestinians check the rubble of a building called the Al-Ghafri Tower in the Rimal area of Gaza City following Israeli Army bombardment. Photo / Getty Images
Israel’s war in Gaza amounts to genocide, the United Nations has formally assessed for the first time.
In a detailed 72-page report, the UN concludes that Israel is committing genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention and is waging its campaign with “intent” – a crucial element of the crime that is the hardest to prove.
“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, chair of the UN Commission set up to investigate war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”
The report was published by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory which has been tracking events in Gaza since the October 7 massacre two years ago in which 1200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.
It concludes that Israel has “committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births”.
Although individuals working for the UN have accused Israel of genocide in Gaza previously, this is the first time the supranational body has issued a formal assessment of genocide.
It will cause outrage in Israel which maintains the war in Gaza is a war of “self-defence” and therefore legal. It will also be rejected by the United States and possibly other UN Security Council members.
In a letter published this month, David Lammy, the then Foreign Secretary, noted that the crime of genocide requires intent to be proven and said the British Government had “not [at the time] concluded that Israel is acting with that intent”.
The UN’s assessment will bolster the case brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ against Israel for genocide by providing it with added weight and evidence.
“This is significant because the Commission of Inquiry has a standing in the international system,” said Dr Shane Darcy, deputy director and professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in the School of Law.
“Other entities will take notice, including the International Court of Justice, where there are already proceedings [against Israel] under way”.
The UN Commission found Israel had: “intentionally killed and seriously harmed an unprecedented number” of Palestinians; caused “starvation” by blocking humanitarian aid; and “implemented a concerted policy to destroy the healthcare system of Gaza”.
Israel, like Hamas before it, had also committed “sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians” including “rape, sexualised torture, and forms of sexual violence” as part of “a pattern of collective punishment to fracture, humiliate, and subjugate the Palestinian population in its entirety”, it said.
The Commission found that children were “deliberately and directly targeted by the Israeli security forces”, including during evacuation at shelters and food distribution sites. It added that “children were shot by snipers and quadcopters, and some were killed while holding white flags”.
The finding of “intent” will be most controversial.
The Commission says this was established – not through a single document or confession – but that it was the “only reasonable inference” to be drawn from the totality of Israel’s statements and actions.
Statements made by the Israeli authorities, as well as the pattern of conduct of the Israeli military in Gaza, “are direct evidence of genocidal intent”, the Commission said.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s former Defence Minister, and Isaac Herzog, Israel’s President, are all named in the report as having “incited the commission of genocide” in Gaza.
“The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza,” Pillay said.
The application of “reasonable inference” as a legal standard to prove intent is certain to attract criticism from Israel and will be fiercely challenged if and when the case is eventually heard by the ICJ.
Ultimately, only the court and its panel judges can decide if a case of genocide has been proven or not.
Israel has refused to co-operate with the Commission, accusing it and its leader, Pillay, of being “fundamentally biased” against the Jewish state.
Although this publication looks at events of the last two years, the Commission was first established in 2022 to look at Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territories more widely.
Pillay, is a former high court judge best known for her work on International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda following the genocide there.
Israel has attacked the UN throughout the current war, accusing its Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, and other senior members of its organisations of bias and anti-Semitism.
Israel stopped co-operating with another of its arms – the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) – earlier in the war after alleging that it had been infiltrated by Hamas.
As of July 2025, 153 states, including Israel, have either ratified or acceded to the 1948 Genocide Convention, obliging them to act, and the Commission urged them to “employ all means reasonably available to them to prevent the commission of genocide in Gaza”.
It said member states should stop sending arms and other equipment to Israel that may be used to commit genocidal acts, and the controversial US-Israeli backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid sites in the south of the enclave should be shut down immediately, it added.
“The international community cannot stay silent on the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” Pillay said.
“Every day of inaction costs lives and erodes the credibility of the international community. All States are under a legal obligation to use all means that are reasonably available to them to stop the genocide in Gaza,” she added.
More than 66,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the outbreak of war, according to figures from Gaza’s Health Ministry which do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
In August, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – confirmed for the first time that a famine was playing out in Gaza City, prompting international condemnation.
Separately, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israel accused the authors of the UN Commission’s report of being “Hamas proxies” and dismissed its findings.
“The report relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others,” it said in a statement.
“In stark contrast to the lies in the report, Hamas is the party that attempted genocide in Israel murdering 1200 people, raping women, burning families alive, and openly declaring its goal of killing every Jew.
“Israel categorically rejects this distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of this Commission of Inquiry.”
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