UN commission finds Israel deliberately targets Palestinian children in Gaza, calling it a key marker of genocide

A United Nations commission of inquiry found on Tuesday 23 June that Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza, concluding that this conduct amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity in the territory and to war crimes in the occupied West Bank.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel published a 94-page report — formally titled The essence of childhood has been destroyed — covering events from 7 October 2023 to 31 March 2026. Israel immediately rejected the findings as a "libelous sham".

What the report found

The commission said the deliberate targeting of children is one of the key elements establishing genocidal intent on the part of Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.

"The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces," said Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the commission. "Even after 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."

The report found that children accounted for around 30 percent of all fatalities in Gaza since October 2023 — a share higher than in previous rounds of fighting, when children made up approximately 24 percent of conflict-related deaths in 2008–09 and in 2014. The commission said at least 20,179 children were killed and 44,143 injured over the period covered by the report. UNICEF has separately estimated that more than 50,000 children have been killed or wounded since October 2023, using a broader counting methodology.

Investigators concluded that Israeli forces continued to deploy high-payload munitions and weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated residential areas despite mounting child casualties. The commission said this "indicates that such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional." It added that it believed children were targeted collectively because Israeli security forces regarded the civilian population as a whole as associated with Hamas and other armed groups.

Hospitals, blockade and detention

The report documents what it describes as a systematic pattern of attacks on hospitals, health clinics and reproductive facilities. Israel's targeting of neonatal and maternity care centres directly harmed the survival of newborns and Palestinians' reproductive future, the commission said, driving rises in miscarriages, birth defects and lasting vulnerabilities among newborns.

The blockade and siege of Gaza imposed by Israel caused the death of Palestinian children through starvation and severely damaged the health of others, depriving them of essential nutrition and raising disease risks as immunisation rates fell and health services collapsed, the commission found.

In the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, the commission found a sharp increase in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian children and documented evidence of torture, including sexual and gender-based violence, during mass arrests and detention. It said Palestinian children — particularly boys — were subjected to forced stripping, beatings, humiliation and deprivation of food in Israeli detention facilities. According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, 236 Palestinian children have been killed in the occupied West Bank since October 2023.

The commission also found that the destruction of orphanages, schools and other education facilities across Gaza and the occupied West Bank had obstructed children's cognitive, social and emotional development and disrupted the foundations of Palestinian society. Nearly all children in Gaza were reported to require psychological support, it said.

Israel's rebuttal

Israel's mission in Geneva rejected what it called the commission's "second defamatory advocacy report." "Israel dismisses this libelous sham," the mission said in a statement, adding that "every child deserves protection" and accusing the commission of ignoring "the brutal tactics of Hamas." Israel's rebuttal said its military consistently strives to minimise harm to children and pointed to its facilitation of vaccinations, the entry of medical staff and the establishment of field hospitals. It accused Hamas of systematically diverting humanitarian aid; Hamas has rejected that charge.

Israel has accused Hamas of repeatedly violating the October 2025 ceasefire and refusing to lay down its arms. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israeli forces now control around 70 percent of the enclave.

Background

The commission was established on 27 May 2021 during a special session of the UN Human Rights Council and is mandated to investigate alleged violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In a September 2025 report, it concluded there were reasonable grounds to determine that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, finding that Israel carried out four of the five prohibited acts defining genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The current report covers a period that began with Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in around 1,200 deaths and 250 people taken hostage. The subsequent war has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to UN News; the Gaza Health Ministry puts the confirmed death toll at more than 73,700 as of early May 2026.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the report, saying its importance lay in "reaffirming the international community's failure to stop the violations committed by the occupying power." Media access restrictions and Israel's limits on independent reporting inside Gaza mean casualty figures and accounts of specific incidents cannot be fully verified independently, as AFP has noted.

The commission called on international bodies to hold Israeli officials to account and on Israel to cease its violence against Palestinian children. It also identified Israeli military units it said were responsible for attacks on children. The UN Human Rights Council's 62nd session, to which the report was submitted, is expected to take up its findings in the coming weeks.