GENEVA — The ceasefire that took hold in Gaza in October 2025 has not ended the killing, Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN human rights office for occupied Palestinian territory, said Monday in Geneva while presenting a new report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Hundreds of Palestinians have died since the ceasefire announcement, and attacks on civilian infrastructure have continued on what Sunghay described as an almost daily basis.
The OHCHR report covers 19 months of violence, from Oct. 7, 2023, through May 31, 2025. It documents large-scale violations of international law by both Israeli and Palestinian parties, including what the office characterizes as atrocity crimes, war crimes and possible crimes against humanity on both sides of the conflict.
The Israeli military has killed 72,769 Palestinians in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, according to figures Sunghay cited at the Geneva briefing. Those deaths occurred in private homes, in shelters for displaced people, in hospitals, in schools, in places of worship, on streets and among people waiting in food aid lines. Sunghay said Israeli forces have continued demolishing buildings across Gaza, including homes that still contain thousands of bodies not yet recovered.
The report's findings on Israeli conduct go beyond individual incidents. Sunghay said the totality of Israeli military actions in Gaza raises serious concern about Israel's compliance with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The OHCHR stopped short of declaring genocide a legal conclusion, noting that determination falls to courts, but said the pattern of conduct warranted that assessment.
On the question of starvation, the report says the Israeli blockade on Gaza produced famine conditions that were foreseeable and subsequently confirmed. Hundreds of people, including children, died of starvation. Sunghay said any deliberate use of starvation against a civilian population constitutes a war crime, and that in certain conditions it can rise to the level of a crime against humanity or genocide.
Displacement inside Gaza has raised separate concerns about forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing, Sunghay said. Residents who fled specific neighborhoods have found those areas razed, with no viable path of return. The OHCHR report flags this pattern as a potential violation of the prohibition on forcible transfer under international humanitarian law.
The report does not assign blame exclusively to Israeli forces. Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity when they attacked civilian communities in Israel on and after Oct. 7, 2023, killing at least 1,124 people. Those groups also seized hostages and fired thousands of unguided missiles into Israeli territory over more than a year. Released hostages have given credible accounts of torture, ill-treatment and sexual violence during captivity, Sunghay said. As of the briefing, no hostages remain in Gaza.
Sunghay said Hamas has continued its own violations even after the ceasefire, including actions directed against the population of Gaza itself. The report describes the overall humanitarian situation in the territory as dire, with Palestinians lacking the means to ensure their own survival or protect their families.
Conditions in the occupied West Bank have deteriorated on a separate but related track. Israeli forces, police and settlers have killed 1,096 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023. Children account for roughly one in five of those deaths. Sunghay said many of those incidents raise concerns about unlawful killings and extrajudicial executions.
Settler violence in the West Bank is carried out routinely with the support, tolerance or direct participation of Israeli security forces, the report says. The Israeli government has expanded the role of the settler movement in security operations, shielded settlers from criminal accountability and, according to the OHCHR, now uses settler violence as a tool to advance its stated annexation agenda. Since the current Israeli government took office, the number of settlements has grown by 80 percent, adding 102 settlements to the 127 that existed previously.
The rate of forced displacement of Palestinians from West Bank land is at its highest level in decades, Sunghay said. The 33,000 Palestinians displaced from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps during 2025 have not been able to return to their homes. In East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities are removing Palestinians from properties around the Old City and transferring those properties to settlers or repurposing them for settlement projects.
Sunghay closed the Geneva briefing by saying the chronicle of violence and dispossession will affect Palestinians for generations. The OHCHR report calls on both Israeli authorities and Palestinian governing bodies to ensure accountability for the violations documented across the 19-month period.
