Gaza ceasefire has not stopped genocide, UN commission says, as Israel moves to shut it down

A three-member commission of independent experts commissioned by the United Nations released a report on Monday, October 26, 2026, saying the ceasefire agreement in Gaza has not stopped what they describe as genocide carried out by Israel in the territory. The same report accused Israeli forces of crimes against humanity in the West Bank, including torture and rape.

The commission was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 as an open-ended inquiry into alleged Israeli and Palestinian rights violations and their root causes. Its findings are not a court verdict. The Associated Press said it could not independently corroborate multiple elements of the report.

Its mission in Geneva called for the commission's dissolution and said on X that the report was part of a "misinformation campaign to demonize the state of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal." Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Daniel Meron, said the commission sought "to undermine Israel's legitimacy and deny its fundamental right to exist and defend itself." The Foreign Affairs Ministry called the report a "propaganda document detached from reality." Israel has long criticized the commission's output and denies accusations of genocide in Gaza and sexual assault by its forces. The report also mentioned wrongdoing by the Palestinian Authority.

The finding lands one year into a ceasefire that more than 100 humanitarian, human rights and civil society organizations said on October 9, 2026 "exists in name only." Those groups cited more than 1,400 people killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in the year since the agreement, nearly two million people still needing shelter, no fully functioning hospital, and 1.4 million facing crisis-level hunger.

The formal end of large-scale fighting has not produced the conditions — safety, shelter, health care, food — that a ceasefire is supposed to deliver. That gap is the substance of the story, not the label attached to it.

It also sharpens a legitimacy fight. Israel is not only contesting the allegations but challenging the existence of the body making them. Whether any international accountability process can proceed depends in part on whether the body survives.