(Jerusalem) – Israeli forces escalated their atrocities in 2025, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, acts of genocide, and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2026. Israeli forces killed, maimed, starved, and forcibly displaced Palestinians and destroyed their homes and civilian infrastructure at a scale unprecedented in the recent history of Israel and Palestine.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza resulted in the killing of more than 69,000 Palestinians, including more than 19,000 children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. An October US-brokered ceasefire led to the release of the remaining living Israeli hostages in Gaza and hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli detention, most without trial or charge. But grave abuses, including the Israeli authorities’ crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians, persist.
“The rules-based international order that grew out of the ashes of World War II is under assault amid the carnage and destruction in Gaza,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The ceasefire has not stopped Israel’s crimes, nor should it stop other countries from taking urgent action to address ongoing abuses and ensure justice.”
In the 529-page World Report 2026, its 36th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Philippe Bolopion writes that breaking the authoritarian wave sweeping the world is the challenge of a generation. With the human rights system under unprecedented threat from the Trump administration and other global powers, Bolopion calls on rights-respecting democracies and civil society to build a strategic alliance to defend fundamental freedoms.
- Israeli authorities used starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, imposing a total blockade for more than 11 weeks, heavily restricting delivery of humanitarian aid at other times, and depriving people of electricity and adequate water. In August, the world’s foremost experts on food insecurity declared a famine in Gaza City and surrounding areas.
- In May, Israeli forces renewed an assault that demolished much of Gaza’s remaining civilian infrastructure. They gunned down hundreds of Palestinians seeking food aid, most at or near distribution sites for a US-backed militarized aid distribution system run by private contractors under the auspices of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
- In January, Israeli forces initiated operations in the northern West Bank that emptied three refugee camps, forcibly displacing around 32,000 people in acts that amounted to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Authorities blocked residents from returning with few exceptions, the largest displacement in the West Bank since 1967.
- Israeli settler violence, carried out with impunity, reached a more than 18-year high in 2025, with more than 2,660 incidents resulting in casualties or property damage as of September.
- The Palestinian Authority escalated its repression of dissent in the West Bank.
- Following the ceasefire, Hamas’ armed wing carried out apparent summary executions of people it accused of working with the Israeli army.
