A United Nations commission of inquiry concluded on Tuesday (September 16) that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and that top Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had incited these acts.

The 72-page legal analysis cites examples of the scale of the killings, aid blockages, forced displacement and the destruction of a fertility clinic to back up its genocide finding, adding its voice to rights groups and others which have reached the same conclusion.

“Genocide is occurring in Gaza," Navi Pillay, head of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and a former International Criminal Court judge, told Reuters during an interview on Monday (September 15).

“And we named the three individuals that we felt were responsible. And we said, and the one is the prime minister, the other the president, and the third is the former minister of defense. And we said that since they acted as agents of the state, then the state of Israel is responsible,” she added.

Israel is fighting a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague. It rejects such accusations, citing its right to self-defence following the deadly October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures.

The subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 64,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, while a global hunger monitor says part of it is suffering from famine.

The 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such".

It says that one or more of five categories must have been committed for violations to count as genocide.

The U.N. Commission found that Israel had committed four of them: killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

It cited as evidence interviews with victims, witnesses, doctors, verified open-source documents and satellite imagery analysis compiled over the nearly two years since the war began.

The Commission also concluded that statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials are "direct evidence of genocidal intent."

It also names Israeli President Isaac Herzog and former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

South Africa's Pillay, who formerly headed a U.N. tribunal for Rwanda where more than 1 million people were killed in 1994, said the situations were comparable.

“In the Rwandan genocide, the group were the Tutsis, and here, the group are the Palestinians," she told Reuters.

While the ICJ referred to other Israeli officials' statements in regard to Gaza and Palestinians in its January 2024 emergency measures order, it did not name Netanyahu.

The Commission of Inquiry's finding is the strongest U.N. finding to date but the body, set up by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2021, does not officially speak for the United Nations. The latter has not yet used the term genocide but is under mounting pressure to do so.

Pillay, 83, will retire in November. She has been told to expect U.S. sanctions as a result of the Gaza finding and condemned such moves against other critics of Israeli policy.

DESCRIPCIÓN DE IMÁGENES

GAZA CITY, GAZA (RECENT - AUGUST 26, 2025) (REUTERS - Access all)

1.⁠ ⁠VARIOUS OF DESTRUCTION AND RUBBLE IN THE AFTERMATH OF AN OVERNIGHT ISRAELI STRIKE AND PEOPLE WALKING ON SITE

2.⁠ ⁠VARIOUS OF CHILD SITTING AMONG THE RUBBLE

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (SEPTEMBER 15, 2025) (REUTERS - Access all)

3. VARIOUS OF CHAIR OF THE U.N. COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, NAVI PILLAY, ARRIVING FOR THE INTERVIEW

4. (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHAIR OF THE U.N. COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, NAVI PILLAY, SAYING:

“Genocide is occurring in Gaza. We haven't gone into Palestine yet. We will, because this is a permanent commission. And we named the three individuals that we felt were responsible. And we said, and one is the prime minister (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), the other the president (Israeli President Isaac Herzog), and the third is the former minister of defense (Former Israel Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant). And we said that since they acted as agents of the state, then the state of Israel is responsible.”

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (SEPTEMBER 10, 2025) (POOL - Access all)

5.⁠ ⁠ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU ENTERING COURTROOM TO CONTINUE TESTIFYING IN HIS OWN CORRUPTION TRIAL

JERUSALEM (SEPTEMBER 14, 2025) (REUTERS - Access all)

6. VARIOUS OF U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO AND NETANYAHU VISITING WESTERN WALL JEWISH PRAYER SITE, BEING SHOWN A PRAYER BOOK

JERUSALEM (FILE - FEBRUARY 27, 2024) (REUTERS - Access all)

7. ISRAELI PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG WALKING FROM BEHIND POLLING BOOTH

8. HERZOG HOLDING HIS BALLOTS

9. HERZOG AND WIFE MICHAL CASTING VOTES

MAVKIIM, ISRAEL (FILE - OCTOBER 19, 2023) (REUTERS - Access all)

10. VARIOUS OF FORMER ISRAEL DEFENSE MINISTER, YOAV GALLANT, WALKING OVER TO SPEAKING TO TROOPS

11. GALLANT SPEAKING TO MEDIA DURING DOORSTEP

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (SEPTEMBER 15, 2025) (REUTERS - Access all)

12. PILLAY DURING INTERVIEW

13. (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHAIR OF THE U.N. COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, NAVI PILLAY, SAYING:

“Well, I said to you, it's a combination of the acts and the statements made by them. So both are essential for you to look at. If they just made the statements and didn't carry out any activities, well, then that would be another crime, like incitement to genocide. In this particular case, because of my own experience, then clearly it's the acts that provide very strong evidence that they carried out the intent to commit genocide that they had articulated, the leaders had articulated and are still articulating.”

14. PILLAY DURING INTERVIEW

15. DOCUMENT WITH TITLE READING (English): “Statement indicating genocidal intent”

16. (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHAIR OF THE U.N. COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, NAVI PILLAY, SAYING:

“Well, look, as early as 7th October 2023, soon after the Hamas attack, at a press conference, Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to inflict, let me quote him, 'mighty vengeance' on, quote again, 'all of the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in, that wicked city; we will turn them into rubble'. So not only vengeance against Hamas, but turning the place into rubble, the whole city, 'I say to residents of Gaza, leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere'.”

17. PILLAY DURING INTERVIEW

18. (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHAIR OF THE U.N. COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, NAVI PILLAY, SAYING:

“So this statement of Netanyahu's carefully directed the call for vengeance at Hamas' locations, to quote him, his use of the phrase wicked city in the same statement implied that he saw the whole city of Gaza as responsible and a target for vengeance. He told Palestinians in Gaza to leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere, making no distinction between combatants and civilians, and knowing that Palestinians in Gaza had nowhere to go. So that's Netanyahu.”

NUSEIRAT, GAZA (FILE - AUGUST 9, 2025) (VIDEO OBTAINED BY REUTERS - Access all)

19.⁠ ⁠AID FALLING ON NUSEIRAT AND PEOPLE RUNNING TOWARDS THE FALLEN PALLETS AS THEY CONTINUE TO DROP

20.⁠ ⁠CROWD TRYING TO HELP 15-YEAR-OLD MUHANNAD EID, LIFTING THE AID BOX WHICH FELL ON TOP OF HIM

21.⁠ ⁠EID'S BROTHER CARRYING MUHANNAD TO HOSPITAL

22.⁠ ⁠EID’S MOTHER CRYING

23.⁠ ⁠WOMEN, INCLUDING EID’S MOTHER, CRYING BY EID'S BODY

24.⁠ ⁠MEN CARRYING EID'S BODY TO CEMETERY

GAZA CITY, GAZA (FILE - AUGUST 9, 2025) (WFP HANDOUT - Access all)

25.⁠ ⁠VARIOUS OF SEVERELY MALNOURISHED 9-YEAR-OLD MARIAM, ON HOSPITAL BED AT FRIENDS OF THE PATIENT HOSPITAL

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (SEPTEMBER 15, 2025) (REUTERS - Access all)

26. (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHAIR OF THE U.N. COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, NAVI PILLAY, SAYING:

“So I see similarities (with Rwanda genocide). And we don't just pick these similarities. They come from the Genocide Convention that is very clear on what constitutes genocide. It has to be the regular intention to kill or murder. So a crime constitutes murder if the person intended to kill that person. That's a crime. But for genocide, it has to involve the overarching intention of destroying a group, in whole or in part. In the Rwandan genocide, the group were the Tutsis, and here, the group are the Palestinians.”

27. PILLAY DURING INTERVIEW

28. DOCUMENT SHOWING REPORTED CASUALTIES IN GAZA

29. (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHAIR OF THE U.N. COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, NAVI PILLAY, SAYING:

“I have already resigned, and you know, I will finish this year's work by 3rd November. So there's no point in sanctioning me, because there's no prospect of me changing direction and so on. That's me. But my main point is, one, that we should not be penalized for doing the work of the United Nations. And secondly, we feel that priority should be on the suffering of Palestinians. They are the victims. And even if we are sanctioned, I don't want to elevate that anywhere near the level of the suffering and the loss of Palestinians.”

30. VARIOUS OF PILLAY DURING INTERVIEW

31. VARIOUS OF EXTERIORS OF THE U.N.