Background
Israel’s genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip entered its third year, leaving the Palestinian territory in ruins. A truce between Israeli armed forces and Palestinian armed groups between 19 January and 18 March collapsed when the Israeli government unilaterally re-escalated hostilities. On 9 September, Israeli air strikes on Doha, the capital of Qatar, hit buildings where a Hamas negotiating delegation was staying, killing six. In the following weeks a ceasefire was agreed, coming into effect on 10 October. Hamas and other armed groups released all 20 living hostages on 13 October in exchange for Israel’s release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners. Despite the ceasefire, 415 Palestinians in Gaza were subsequently killed by Israeli forces, of whom at least 100 were children, according to UNICEF.
Israel’s armed conflicts extended to other regional actors throughout the year. On 4 May a missile fired by a Yemeni Huthi armed group hit Ben Gurion airport in central Israel. Between May and September, the Israeli air force and navy targeted Yemeni ports, airports and power stations (see Yemen entry). After the Israeli military attacked Iranian targets on 13 June (see Iran entry), Iran fired missiles at Israel, killing 29 people, and used cluster munitions. Israel conducted air strikes and raids on southern Syria in July and November. Israel continued to conduct almost daily air strikes on southern Lebanon, killing more than 127 civilians according to the OHCHR, the UN human rights office (see Lebanon entry).
Genocide
Israel continued to deliberately inflict conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.
Following a period of improved humanitarian access between 19 January and 2 March, the Israeli military imposed a total siege that was only partially eased on 19 May. The relaxation of the siege did not include easing restrictions on certain critical supplies, such as fuel and cooking gas, which were not allowed into Gaza from 2 March until 11 September. Israeli authorities cut the electricity supply to the last desalination plant in Gaza on 9 March, further reducing access to water. Without fuel, electricity generators could not power hospital equipment.1 Gaza residents seeking aid from Israeli and US-run distribution centres were attacked, killing 859 Palestinians between late May and August, as Israel and the USA sought to replace the existing UN-led aid mechanism with a militarized and deadly alternative.
More than 13,000 children were admitted to hospital with acute malnutrition, which has lifelong consequences, resulting from Israel’s blocking of aid supplies. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, by mid-August more than half a million people in the Gaza Strip faced famine, the highest level of catastrophic starvation. Another 1.07 million people were in the second-highest level of starvation, and 396,000 people were in the third, critical phase. According to Médecins Sans Frontières, the number of patients suffering from malnutrition presenting in clinics in Gaza City nearly quadrupled from the beginning of May to mid-July.2
Israel conducted direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, striking crowded civilian spaces, including hospitals, cafes, busy market streets, and schools housing internally displaced people. Israeli air and ground forces killed 26,791 and injured 64,065 in Gaza during the year, of whom 60% were children, women and older people. One of the deadliest days was 18 March, when 414 Palestinians were killed including 174 children. On 23 March the Israeli military attacked five ambulances, killing 15 aid workers including Red Crescent paramedics, and injuring two. On 30 June the Israeli military struck al-Baqa cafe in Gaza City, killing 32 people, mostly civilians.
The combination of air strikes on medical facilities and Israel’s blocking of essential aid deliveries, including medical necessities for reproductive healthcare, had a devastating effect on the health of pregnant and breastfeeding women and on newborns and infants.3
The mass and repeated displacement of more than 90% of Gaza’s population caused great physical and mental harm. All of Gaza’s universities and colleges, hundreds of mosques and three churches were damaged or destroyed. Most schools were transformed into shelters for displaced people, although many were damaged by Israeli air strikes and unmanned demolition vehicles.
What was left of Khuza’a, a town of 11,000 inhabitants in the south, was completely destroyed in May,4 as was much of Gaza City in September, without imperative military necessity.5 On 5 September, Israel began a campaign to destroy high-rise residential and commercial buildings across Gaza City, razing at least 16 tower blocks in 10 days, along with makeshift camps in their vicinity. This destruction resulted in the displacement of thousands of families. Even after the signing of the truce in October, Israeli authorities and forces persisted in committing genocide by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of Gaza’s population without signalling any change in intent.6
Apartheid
Forcible transfer
In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities demolished 1,658 buildings, permanently displacing some 2,116 Palestinians, according to OCHA. In January an Israeli court ordered the eviction of 27 families from their homes in Silwan, a neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, after a decade-long case filed by an Israeli settler organization.7
Eighty-six new outposts were established in addition to some 371 settlements and outposts already in existence, and Israeli authorities formally authorized the establishment of 54 settlements, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli anti-occupation organization.
Israeli forces allowed or encouraged settlers to terrorize Palestinians with impunity and sometimes joined in the violence. The attacks expelled some 220 families from 19 villages in all areas of the West Bank, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. The villages of Jinba and Shi’b al-Butum, in the South Hebron Hills in the southern West Bank were repeatedly attacked, with a school and clinic ransacked.
Inside Israel, Israeli authorities demolished some 5,000 homes in Bedouin villages in the Naqab/Negev desert in the south, according to the Advanced Steering Committee for Naqab Arabs, a local representative group. Expanding Jewish locales were administered by separate local authorities. More than 60 homes were demolished in Al-Sir village in the north-east of the Naqab/Negev during the hottest months, making some 1,500 Bedouin Palestinian citizens of Israel homeless or forcibly displaced to inadequate housing in Bedouin-only townships, which lacked essential services. On 12 November, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the forced displacement of about 500 residents of the village of Ras Jrabah within three months to make way for the expansion of the Jewish city of Dimona.
Thousands of children born of parents with different legal statuses determined by Israeli authorities continued to face discriminatory obstacles in obtaining birth certificates and family unification status, due to prohibitions in the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order), which had been renewed almost continuously since 2003. On 9 May the Knesset further restricted family unification by amending the Citizenship Law to deny or revoke Jerusalem residency and Israeli citizenship in cases where a Palestinian spouse, parent or child has any extended family member with “security issues”, including minor criminal records.
Israeli authorities continued to prevent the return home of refugees and internally displaced Palestinians expelled in 1948 and 1967.
Freedom of movement
The blockade of Gaza continued into its 19th year with increased restrictions and was escalated to a total siege between 2 March and 19 May. For the third consecutive year, Israeli authorities continued to completely prohibit medical evacuations from Gaza into the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, despite court petitions. It also continued to severely restrict medical evacuations abroad. Together with the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, this led to hundreds of preventable deaths.
OCHA counted 849 roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank, obstructing Palestinians’ movement between Palestinian villages and towns, and delaying emergency services’ access.
Unlawful killings
According to the International Federation of Journalists, Israeli forces killed 56 journalists and media workers, more than in any other country. Some were killed while they were reporting.
West Bank
The Israeli army deployed tanks, carried out air strikes, destroyed civilian buildings and infrastructure, and imposed extensive restrictions on freedom of movement in order to conduct militarized arrest raids in Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus and Tubas in the north, and in Hebron in the south of the West Bank. A total of 240 Palestinians, including 55 children, were killed by Israeli forces or settlers, including at least 225 by Israeli forces, according to OCHA. Israeli forces also shot at displaced civilians who tried to return to their homes, according to witnesses.8
Settlers killed at least nine Palestinians and injured at least 830, according to OCHA. On 28 July, Awda Al-Hathaleen, a human rights defender in Umm al-Kheir village in the South Hebron Hills, was killed by a settler who was released after three days under house arrest and did not face charges.9 State-backed settler violence, mostly enjoying impunity, exacerbated the hostile environment resulting in the forcible transfer of the civilian population.10
Arbitrary detention
Some 4,622 Palestinians were held without charge or trial at the end of the year, of whom 3,385 were under administrative detention orders and 1,237 were held under the Unlawful Combatants Law, according to HaMoked, an Israeli rights group. HaMoked reported that hundreds more detainees from Gaza were held in military facilities without any form of legal process or even registration.
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, continued to be detained arbitrarily since being arrested alongside colleagues on 27 December 2024 while caring for patients. His lawyer said that he was beaten and deprived of food and sleep.
Torture and other ill-treatment
Israeli prisons and detention centres continued to violate the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including through the denial of medicine, food, clothing and sleep, continuous beating, cuffing and blindfolding, dog attacks, rape and other sexual violence, among other abuses. This led to the deaths of at least 98 Palestinian detainees between October 2023 and November 2025, according to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel. In November the UN Committee Against Torture described Israel’s practices as a “de facto state policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment”.
Crimes committed by the armed forces were inadequately examined in internal military debriefs and in investigations by the Military Advocate General. On 6 February, only one of five soldiers charged by the Military Advocate General for assaulting a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman detention centre in southern Israel was convicted. Following a plea bargain, the soldier was sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment.
Right to truth, justice and reparation
Aside from the one soldier sentenced in relation to torture (see above), two soldiers and a platoon commander were imprisoned for seven days in April, and four other officers disciplined, in relation to the ransacking of a school and clinic in the West Bank village of Jinba in March (see above, Apartheid).
There was no impartial or effective Israeli investigation into the Golani brigade’s killing of 15 medical staff and first responders in March (see above, Genocide).
The UN Commission of Inquiry received no response from the Israeli government and continued to be barred from entering Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Israel allowed no independent investigators or international journalists into Gaza.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the USA and Hungary, despite being subject to an ICC arrest warrant.
In September the UN General Assembly’s deadline for ending Israel’s unlawful occupation of the OPT passed unheeded.
Women’s and girls’ rights
In the context of increased domestic violence in Israel, there was a sharp rise in killings of women compared to previous years, according to Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, which documented 46 femicides, 26 of which were committed by family members. According to an NGO, The Abraham Initiatives, cases of women murder victims who are Palestinian citizens of Israel are five times less likely to be resolved compared to those of Jewish women victims. In general, murders of Palestinian citizens were less than half as likely to be resolved compared to cases where the victims was a Jewish citizen.
Freedom of expression and assembly
Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel faced repression during protests when they expressed their opposition to the Israeli forces’ attacks on Gaza, with the police occasionally using stun grenades and water cannons. Dozens were detained for social media posts commenting on Israeli military actions in Gaza. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, 96% of incitement cases opened by the police under the over-broad Anti-Terrorism Law targeted Palestinian citizens of Israel. Meanwhile, Palestinian media monitoring organization 7amleh found thousands of Israeli social media posts inciting violence against Palestinians.
International solidarity activists carrying humanitarian aid by boat towards Gaza in June and September were detained by Israeli forces and deported. They included human rights defenders, doctors, parliamentarians and journalists protesting against Israel’s blockade and genocide.
Conscientious objectors
Seven Israeli citizens were jailed for refusing to serve in the army based on their objections to military occupation, apartheid and genocide against Palestinians. Conscientious objector Yuval Peleg spent 130 days in prison.
Death penalty
On 11 November the Knesset approved in the first reading a proposed amendment to the Penal Law instituting the mandatory death penalty for those convicted of murder “motivated by racism or hostility toward a particular public, and under circumstances where the act was committed with the intent to harm the State of Israel and the rebirth of the Jewish people in their homeland”. If passed in the second and third readings, the discriminatory bill would exclusively target Palestinians.
Right to a healthy environment
The destruction of sanitation and waste disposal systems in Gaza caused the release of untreated sewage and other toxic materials that polluted water systems. An international research team found that military activities in Gaza and post-war reconstruction would emit the equivalent of 32 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than the annual emissions of 102 countries in peacetime, undermining efforts to mitigate climate change.
- “Israel/OPT: Two months of cruel and inhumane siege are further evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza”, 2 May ↩︎
- “Israel/OPT: New testimonies provide compelling evidence that Israel’s starvation of Palestinians in Gaza is a deliberate policy”, 18 August ↩︎
- “UN report on Israel’s gender-based violence and genocidal acts against women’s health facilities must spur action to protect Palestinians”, 13 March ↩︎
- “Israel/OPT: Satellite imagery reveals total razing of Khuza’a in May 2025 in further evidence of Israel’s wanton destruction and genocide in Gaza”, 13 June ↩︎
- “Israel/OPT: Catastrophic wave of mass displacement under inhumane conditions as Israel obliterates Gaza City”, 3 October ↩︎
- “Israel/OPT: Post-ceasefire: Israel’s genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip continues”, 27 November ↩︎
- “Israel/OPT: ‘This is my home, and I will never leave’: Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians”, 15 May ↩︎
- “Israel’s destructive West Bank military operation fuels mass forced displacement of Palestinians”, 5 June ↩︎
- “Israel/OPT: Killing of prominent Palestinian West-Bank activist Awda Al-Hathaleen demands justice and accountability”, 30 July ↩︎
- “Israel/OPT: State-backed deadly rampage by Israeli settlers underscores urgent need to dismantle apartheid”, 22 April ↩︎
