UN Inquiry Finds Israeli Forces Shield Settlers, Hamas Commits War Crimes

A United Nations commission of inquiry has issued a damning report that accuses Israeli authorities of directly enabling and shielding settler violence in the occupied West Bank, while simultaneously finding that Hamas committed war crimes against both Palestinians and Israelis. The document, released on Tuesday by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, marks the same body that last year concluded Israel had perpetrated “genocide” during the war in Gaza. Its latest findings paint a picture of Palestinian civilians caught between state-backed settler attacks and the brutal rule of the militant faction that governs the enclave.

The report details a 130 percent surge in settler attacks on Palestinian villages and agricultural land since 2023, often carried out by groups of masked assailants. It states that Israeli authorities have enabled these attacks through financial and military support, fostering a climate of impunity reinforced by judicial and law-enforcement bodies. Israeli security forces, the inquiry found, not only fail to intervene but actively shield settlers during assaults that have killed, injured and displaced Palestinians. “Civilians across war-ravaged Gaza and the occupied West Bank are being systematically and deliberately subjected to severe rights violations,” the commission concluded, a phrase that reverberated across diplomatic channels from Geneva to New York. The Israeli prime minister’s office and the military did not respond to requests for comment.

At the same time, the report holds Hamas responsible for war crimes, noting that Palestinians in Gaza are “violently repressed and controlled by the very faction” that claims to represent them. This dual condemnation creates an uncomfortable symmetry: while Israeli state organs back settler aggression, Hamas’s own rule imposes a regime of terror on civilians. Viewed from European capitals, the findings complicate the often binary narratives that dominate Middle East diplomacy. Analysts in London observe that the commission’s willingness to censure both a UN member state and a designated terrorist group in a single report is rare, and may shift the terms of debate at the Human Rights Council, where the document will soon be presented.

The inquiry’s previous genocide determination already placed Israel under intense international legal scrutiny. Now, by documenting how settler violence is institutionalised rather than incidental, the commission strengthens arguments for accountability mechanisms that transcend the traditional focus on non-state actors. For Palestinians on the ground, however, the report merely codifies a lived reality: trapped between Israeli forces and settlers on one side, and Hamas’s authoritarian grip on the other, civilians find no refuge from systematic rights abuses. The challenge for the international community is whether this legal reckoning can translate into meaningful pressure on all parties, or whether it will join the growing archive of UN findings that command attention but yield little change.