Palestinians trapped between Israeli forces, settlers and Hamas: UN report
The global body said the Israeli authorities have enabled settler attacks through financial and military support, in a climate of impunity fostered by judicial and law-enforcement bodies
The Israeli authorities are directly involved in illegal settler attacks that have killed, injured and displaced Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, while Israeli security forces provide protection to settlers, a UN inquiry said on Tuesday.
The report by the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory also found that Palestinians are trapped between Israeli forces, settlers and Hamas.
The global body said the Israeli authorities have enabled settler attacks through financial and military support, in a climate of impunity fostered by judicial and law-enforcement bodies.
It said attacks on Palestinian villages and agricultural land have surged since 2023, rising by 130 per cent, including incidents involving groups of masked assailants.
Israeli security forces have routinely accompanied settlers and acted as a shield for the violence, the report said.
"Violence by settlers is the direct outcome of Israeli policies that support, enable and protect their actions," commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar said in a statement.
Civilians across war-ravaged Gaza and the occupied West Bank are being "systematically and deliberately" subjected to severe rights violations, the UN probe report said.
It said that civilians in the territory were also being "violently repressed and controlled by the very faction that claims to govern them".
In the Gaza Strip, "ordinary Palestinians find themselves trapped between the structural violence and mass atrocities of Israeli forces and the predatory, fear-based rule of Hamas", the report said.
Hundreds of thousands of illegal Israeli settlers live among millions of Palestinians on land Israel occupied in a 1967 war, where Palestinians hope to build a state.
Most countries and the UN's top court consider such settlements illegal and a violation of international law.
At least seven Palestinians were killed and 832 injured last year, with violence continuing into 2026 in the form of near-daily attacks, according to the United Nations.
