The United Nations Commission of Inquiry says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza by deliberately targeting children.

The United Nations Commission of Inquiry has declared that Israel has committed genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the occupied West Bank by deliberately targeting Palestinian children.

A new report says Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, and the killings have continued since last October’s Gaza ceasefire.

The commission said it had reasonable grounds to conclude that the action was “part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children.”

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the commission’s report in its entirety, calling it a “pretend fake” and “more disgusting propaganda than previous reports.”

On October 7, 2023, the Israeli army launched an operation in Gaza in response to an unprecedented attack by Hamas on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

Since then, Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed at least 73,035 people, including more than 21,280 children, according to the state’s Hamas-run health ministry, a figure the United Nations says is reliable.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel was established by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2011. They are in violation of the International Human Rights and Human Rights Act, which was established in 2021.

The three-member expert panel does not speak officially for the United Nations.

Last September, The commission accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.. According to a report, there are reasonable grounds to conclude that four of the five acts of genocide described in the 1948 Genocide Convention were committed by Israeli authorities and security forces. Israel called that report distorted and false.

The commission previously concluded that Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups committed war crimes and other violations of international law on October 7, 2023, and that Israeli security forces committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.

Last October, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire as part of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war.

Since then, both sides have repeatedly accused each other of breaching the peace agreement. Gaza’s health ministry said more than 1,020 Palestinians were killed, including 265 children. The Israeli army said four soldiers were also killed.

On Tuesday, the Commission of Inquiry said in a statement accompanying its report that Israel’s military operations in Gaza continued on a “large scale and systematic basis,” resulting in “unprecedented deaths, injuries, and maiming of Palestinian children.”

“Even after the October 2025 ceasefire agreement, children continue to be killed and seriously injured because of Israel’s disregard for the ceasefire and the protection of Palestinian children under international law,” said Indian jurist Srinivasan Muralidhar, chairman of the commission.

“The protection, care and survival of Palestinian children are inseparable from the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” he added. “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the ability of the Palestinian people to live and determine their future.”

The commission’s new report, External Israel has directly targeted Palestinian children in Gaza by firing precision weapons such as quadcopter drones and snipers and using high-impact weapons against residential buildings, schools and displacement camps crowded with children.

Israel is legally responsible for failing to protect Palestinian children from attacks by Israeli soldiers and West Bank settlers, he added.

He also said that children in Gaza and the West Bank, especially adolescents, “are imprisoned, tortured and abused in Israeli jails and prisons,” and that he “documented sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinian children, often while in prison or incarceration.”

Israeli attacks on newborn and pediatric hospitals in Gaza, meanwhile, are “undermining their existence as protection groups by systematically undermining children’s access to life-sustaining care,” the report said.

It also accused Israel of using starvation as a tactic of war and warned that restrictions on humanitarian aid to Gaza would “result in severe and chronic malnutrition among children in Gaza, depriving them of the basic necessities of life.”

And the Israeli authorities, through attacks on schools, mass displacements and forced closures, “systematically disrupt children’s ability to learn and destroy the intellectual and social foundations of Palestinian society,” he said.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry’s commission condemned the report, saying that “it is a fundamentally flawed practice to single out and vilify Israel instead of seeking the truth.”

“Hamas ignores the use of Palestinian children as human shields and military cover and completely erases the Israeli children who have been brutally killed, kidnapped and targeted by Hamas,” he added. They accused the commission of having “no credible means of verifying the claims”.

Israel’s leaders have repeatedly denied genocide, saying their military actions in Gaza were in self-defense, defeating Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups and freeing Israeli hostages.

He also emphasized that the Israeli military operates in accordance with international law and has taken all possible measures to prevent harm to civilians.

South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israeli forces of genocide could take years to reach a conclusion. Israel described the case as “absolutely baseless” and “biased and false claims”.