Israel continues to commit genocide in Gaza by targeting children, UN inquiry says
1st July 2026
Report finds Israel is preventing Palestinian people from existing by aiming at children
ISRAEL continues to commit genocide in Gaza by deliberately targeting children, an independent UN inquiry has found.
The investigation - carried out by the UN commission of inquiry - documents crimes against Palestinian children since the start of the war in Gaza, and said about 30% of the people killed in the enclave by Israeli forces have been under the age of 18.
The report claims the Israeli authorities and the Israel Defence Forces have, “deliberately carried out acts inflicting death and severe bodily and mental harm on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children.”
The commission says it has reasonable grounds to conclude that those acts “form part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza."
The report describes how targeting children was a key indicator in establishing the Israeli authority and security forces’ genocidal intent to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part.
A previous report by the commission in September found Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and that Israeli officials, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu incited these acts. Netanyahu is wanted seperately by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.
The Israeli mission in Geneva said Israel rejected the commission’s report, calling it a “libellous sham” and “a propaganda piece as outrageous as it’s previous ones.”
The Israeli military launched its war in Gaza in response to the shock Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.
In Israel’s subsequent military campaign, at least 73,035 people have been killed in Gaza, including more than 21,280 children, according to the territory’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN and international humanitarian organisations.
The commission’s chair, in a statement accompanying the report said: “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces.
“Even after the the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”
Israeli forces used high-payload munitions and weapons with widespread effects in densely populated residential areas, despite mounting child casualties, the report said.
“This indicates that such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional,” it said.
The inquiry added that it believed children were targeted collectively because the Israeli security forces considered the civilian population as a whole to be associated with Hamas and other armed factions.
In 2023, Israel’s president Isaac Herzog incited the collective punishment of the people of Gaza when he said: “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible [for the October 7 attacks]. Its not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.”
Conditions Israel imposed on Gaza, including mass bombing, repeated displacement, and starvation caused by a blockade of aid, food, and medicine, severely harmed children’s health and development, resulting in preventable deaths and trauma, the report said.
The inquiry also documented how Israel’s targeting of neonatal and maternity care centres in Gaza have harmed the survival of newborn babies and Palestinians’ reproductive future, including rises in miscarriages, birth defects, and lasting harm to children born under unrelenting violence.
The UN report also investigated Israel’s illegal violence towards Palestinian children living in the occupied West Bank - the Palestinian territory Israel continues to control militarily despite the international court of justice ruling its occupation unlawful.
In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the commission found since October 7 2023, a significant rise in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian children, and documented evidence of the security forces’ arbitrary detention and torture of Palestinian children, including the use of sexual and gender-based violence.
It said Palestinian children, especially boys, were subjected to systemic mistreatment in prison, including forced stripping, beatings, and food deprivation.
The report said: “By targeting children, Israel is eroding the foundational structure of Palestinian society, weakening the demographic vitality, and overall capacity of the Palestinian people to sustain and exercise its right to determine its future as a people.”
