UN Experts Warn Gaza Genocide Extends into West Bank

27 April 2026

By Karolina Bonde, Genocide Watch

© UNICEF/Alaa Badarneh Members of a family flee Jenin due to an escalation of violence.

On Friday March 7, 2026, a distinguished group of United Nations experts warned that the genocide in Gaza is extending into the West Bank, as violence and Israeli military operations escalate across the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. 

The warning came amid growing alarm over conditions in Jerusalem and the wider West Bank, where they documented a sharp increase in extrajudicial killings, large-scale demolitions, and forced displacement. In addition, Palestinians have been facing increasingly punitive policing and restrictions on access to holy sites, particularly during the month of Ramadan. Between 2021 and 2025, experts recorded 144 deaths, over 11,500 arrests, nearly 2,400deportation orders, and more than 1,700 demolitions in Jerusalem's Governorate alone. Settler incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound reached 73,871 in 2025 alone. 

"Under the cover of an existential war against the Palestinians, Israel is accelerating measures that alter Jerusalem's demographic composition, religious character and legal status, destroying the remnants of the pluralistic fabric that Jerusalem has represented for centuries, for Muslims, Christians and Jews," the experts said, adding, "These acts must be understood in their totality: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, by whatever means, whatever the cost and whatever crimes it takes. This environment is coercing Palestinians to leave their homes and life in a city where their roots run deep.” 

The experts called for immediate international action following the ICJ's July 2024 ruling that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful, urging all states to refrain from recognizing or aiding the occupation and to act to end it.  

These warnings echo those raised by Amnesty International, which accused Israeli authorities of unleashing an unprecedented wave of unlawful measures designed to dispossess Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and renderannexation irreversible. Amnesty documented a sharp escalation in the expansion of illegal settlements, authorizations of new outposts, and the formalization of West Bank land as state property. 

Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories and one of the experts behind the referenced report, has formally characterized these patterns as genocidal. In her report,"Genocide as Colonial Erasure," Albanese concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel had committed acts of genocide in Gaza, since expanding that analysis to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Under Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention, genocide includes deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group's physical destruction, a threshold UN experts argue the systematic demolition of homes, seizure of land and killing of civilians collectively meet. "The current genocide is part of a century-long project of eliminatory settler-colonialism in Palestine, a stain on the international system and humanity, which must be ended, investigated and prosecuted,” she concluded. 

There is no denying that the scale of the toll is stark. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the wider West Bank area since October 2023, nearly a quarter of them children. The agency noted that rising violence by Israeli settlers and armed forces is accompanied and fueled by impunity, while de facto annexation continues to accelerate as settlements expand. 

UNRWA's statement closed with a pointed reminder of the legal framework that experts across multiple bodies say is being violated: "The International Court of Justice has ruled that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal and must cease. International law applies to everyone, everywhere. There can be no exceptions." 

Genocide Watch recommends: 

• States and relevant international bodies should take urgent steps to protect Palestinian civilians, including by ensuring unhindered humanitarian access, robust monitoring and documentation of violations, and measures aimed at preventing further displacement, unlawful killings and destruction of property. 

• States should act in accordance with the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion, including by refraining from recognizing or assisting the unlawful occupation and by ensuring that inaction does not contribute to ongoing violations.  

• Independent media, civil society organizations and international bodies should continue to document and report on developments on the ground, ensuring sustained international attention and supporting efforts to prevent furtherviolations and preserve evidence.  

© 2026, Genocide watch