Palestine - July 2025

An independent UN Commission of Inquiry concluded in a report released on 16 September that Israel has committed acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 31 July 2025. The Commission further found that senior Israeli officials, namely President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, incited these acts with impunity, noting that a lack of domestic investigation and prosecution has failed to ‘prevent and punish the commission of the crime’. Specifically, the Commission determined that Israel perpetrated four of the five genocidal acts defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention: (1) killing members of the targeted group; (2) causing serious bodily or mental harm; (3) deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s destruction in whole or in part; and (4) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

*Since the impact of these events are felt primarily in Palestine, they are coded in the entries for the latter. While they are not coded for Israel, it is Israeli action that causes the effects on democracy in Palestine.

Sources: UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, Middle East Eye, Reuters