The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory published a report on Tuesday documenting summary executions, kneecappings, bone fractures with metal pipes, and systematic beatings perpetrated by forces linked to Hamas and police units in Gaza. The investigators concluded that these acts constitute war crimes and were deliberately disseminated to instill terror in the civilian population.
The organization, chaired since this year by the Indian jurist Srinivasan Muralidhar, identified 249 cases of serious physical violence between August 2024 and January 2026, which left 108 dead and 384 injured. Forces affiliated with Hamas participated in at least 60 of those incidents, including two public executions in which eleven men were shot to death before crowds. The perpetrators justified the punishments by alleging collaboration with Israel, looting of humanitarian aid, or ties to rival groups, without the intervention of courts or any legal procedure whatsoever.
The report describes in detail at least two of those filmed executions. In September 2025, three blindfolded men were shot by masked men in front of Shifa Hospital before a crowd of civilians. A month later, eight people were dragged to a public square in Gaza City and executed in the same manner. The commission notes that both groups were publicly accused of espionage and treason before being killed, without any due process to support those accusations.
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Palestinian militants stand guard during a hostage exchange in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip. October 13, 2025.
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Muralidhar stressed that Hamas forces “have exploited the vacuum created by the relentless Israeli attacks and the widespread destruction of Gaza” to consolidate a government based on fear. The report clarifies that the use of hospital facilities where punishments were also documented does not cause those premises to lose their protection under international humanitarian law.
Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007, when it forcibly displaced the Palestinian Authority. Since a ceasefire halted more than two years of full-scale war with Israel in October 2025, the movement has consolidated its control over the areas it still administers. Nearly 73,000 Palestinians died during the conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The report does not limit its findings to Hamas. In the West Bank, the commission denounces an escalation of attacks by Israeli settlers: at least seven Palestinians were killed and 832 were injured in 2025, more than double the previous year. The investigators point out that this violence “functions as a means to implement Israeli state policy,” as settlers and government forces “work toward the same strategic objectives,” including the entrenchment of illegal settlements and the displacement of Palestinians. Since the beginning of the conflict, 1,098 Palestinians —including at least 240 children— have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank, according to UN figures.
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Israel rejected the findings. The Israeli mission to the UN in Geneva maintained that the report “seeks to establish a false moral equivalence between Hamas terrorists and Israeli civilians”. The report will be debated at the 62nd session of the Human Rights Council, with the Palestinians of Gaza trapped, according to the document itself, between Israeli forces and the Hamas government.
