Al-Haq welcomes the latest report published on 16 September 2025 by the United Nations (UN) Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (CoI). The report constitutes a watershed moment in the pursuit of accountability affirming in precise legal terms what Palestinian human rights organisations, including Al-Haq, have long affirmed: Israel’s settler-colonial, apartheid regime’s conduct in Gaza amounts to the crime of genocide. Moreover, the Commission found that genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference from the totality of the evidence uncovered through its own investigations, but stressed that “it is clear that its findings are not the only relevant facts and events for an analysis of genocide” (para 2) and the incidents included in the report are non-exhaustive.

The Commission’s analysis meticulously applies the elements of genocide, as codified in articles II and III of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention), to Israel’s ongoing, and rapidly intensifying, military assault, siege, and widespread and systematic policies of destruction, displacement, and annihilation in Gaza. Based on this analysis, the Commission underscores that four acts of genocide are being committed in Gaza since October 2023, including:

1. Killing members of the group – The Israeli settler-colonial, apartheid regime’s military campaign on Gaza has produced mass, indiscriminate killing across Gaza. Within a single year, life expectancy in Gaza collapsed from 75.5 years before October 2023 to 40.5 years. There is undeniable evidence that the outcome of weapons used by Israeli military forces is consistent with the strategy of indiscriminate and maximum killing and destruction, including the use of heavy unguided munitions with a wide margin of error in densely populated residential areas. An Israeli military spokesperson brazenly said: “we are focused on what causes maximum damage” (para 22).

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group – Gaza now bears the largest cohort of amputees in modern history. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza currently live with devastating injuries while dealing with trauma and starvation-induced diseases, consequences of relentless bombardment, forced displacement, and the deliberate weaponization and imposition of unbearable living conditions.

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part – The conditions of life in Gaza imposed by the Israel is designed to destroy the Palestinian people, in clear violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention. Through the systematic destruction of homes and critical infrastructure, in particular healthcare facilities; the repeated forced displacement of Palestinians into ever-shrinking overcrowded and unsafe areas; the widespread obstruction of food, water, fuel, and vital humanitarian aid; the weaponization of starvation and creation of a manmade famine; and attacks on the reproductive health of Palestinians, the Commission reiterates the findings of Al-Haq and other human rights organisations: Israeli Occupation Forces have intentionally manufactured conditions calculated to render survival impossible. Children, expectant and nursing mothers, those in need of urgent medical care, the elderly and the most vulnerable of Palestinians in Gaza have borne the brunt of this engineered devastation, producing both immediate and generational harm. These acts are not incidental or standard consequences of “war”; they are deliberate, coordinated, and calculated to erase all traces of Palestinian life in Gaza.

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group – The destruction of Gaza’s reproductive health system, including the obliteration of Al-Basma IVF clinic, Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, and the loss of 5,000 embryos and reproductive specimens, ensured that generations of Palestinian children “who were meant to be born from these 5,000 reproductive specimens will never exist. Families will be forever changed and bloodlines may end because of a loss of these reproductive tissues.” The denial of maternal care, nutrition, and reproductive services further cements this genocidal policy. Again, the Commission reaffirms what was extensively detailed in Al-Haq’s report, namely, that long-term demographic and generational impact underscores the deliberate intent to prevent the reproduction of the Palestinian population in Gaza. 

Establishing Genocidal Intent

The Commission also finds that the four genocidal acts have been committed with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as highlighted by the overwhelming evidence of senior Israeli military and political officials openly calling for the eradication and expulsion of Palestinians from their land. A rhetoric that is far from isolated and is instead operationalised through Israeli military forces on the ground. The CoI’s findings establish the Israeli authorities’ genocidal intent beyond reasonable doubt, fulfilling the dolus specialis requirement under the Genocide Convention.

The Israeli settler-colonial, apartheid regime’s longstanding disregard for international law and complete lack of accountability for its historic and ongoing international crimes against Palestinians is upheld not only by its military forces, but also through its political and military leaders whose actions are directly attributable to the Zionist regime. As Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission, affirmed:

“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for 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 with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza.”

Third State Responsibility to Prevent Genocide

The duty to prevent and punish genocide extends not only to the responsible State, but to all States Parties to the Genocide Convention and the international community generally on account of the prohibition of genocide constituting a peremptory norm under customary international law that gives rise to States’ binding erga omnes obligations. Third States, already made aware of the serious risk of genocide, were and remain legally obliged to act, as actual or constructive knowledge of the imminent or ongoing crime of genocide has triggered the duty to prevent. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has made expressly clear the legal duty of States to “employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible”. This applies regardless of whether it is certain that genocide is about to be committed.

The Commission’s definitive findings add further support to the already highly authoritative findings of the ICJ in South Africa v. Israel, in which it ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide and issued three separate Orders on provisional measures in order to protect the rights of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention (each of which have been entirely ignored by Third States), as well as to the landmarks reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese. States can no longer bury their head in the sand while flouting their binding legal obligations. They have both positive and negative duties to act.

These include:

1. The cessation of transfer of arms and other equipment or items, including jet fuel, to the State commissioning genocide or Third States where there is reason to suspect their use in military operations that have involved or could involve the commission of genocide;

2. Comprehensive sanctions targeting high-level Israeli officials, Ministers, and the entire Security Cabinet;

3. Cutting all diplomatic, financial, and trade ties with Israel;

4. Committing to fully cooperate with and support the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC; and

5. Undertaking, on the basis of universal jurisdiction, to arrest and prosecute nationals or persons present within their jurisdiction who are responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against the Palestinian people and investigating and prosecuting dual citizens serving in Israel’s military and intelligence services.

States bear responsibility if they “manifestly failed to take all measures… which might have contributed to preventing the genocide.” As the ICJ has previously clarified, it is irrelevant whether Third States claim, or even prove, that even if they had employed all means reasonably at its disposal, they would not have sufficed to prevent the commission of genocide:

“As well as being generally difficult to prove, this is irrelevant to the breach of the obligation of conduct in question, the more so since the possibility remains that the combined efforts of several States, each complying with its obligation to prevent, might have achieved the result — averting the commission of genocide — which the efforts of only one State were insufficient to produce”

Al-Haq has consistently warned that Israel’s settler-colonial, apartheid regime entrenched across the entirety of unlawfully occupied Palestine is inseparable from its genocidal practices in Gaza. The Commission’s report reinforces the existence of an ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people: the genocide in Gaza is not an aberration, but rather the culmination of a long-standing system of subjugation, racial domination, oppression, dispossession and forcible population transfer carried out with the goal of Palestinian erasure. While welcome, acknowledging genocide only after it has been committed, despite almost two years of documented, corroborated evidence, exposes the manifest failures of the international community and the very systems designed to prevent such atrocities. The international community must meet its legal and moral obligations without delay. Third States, whether acting unilaterally or collectively, must take concrete and positive steps to put an end to the genocide to protect Palestinians from their genocidal Occupying Power and its imperialist allies.