Through the years, numerous humanitarian organizations have produced detailed reports on the situation in Israel-Palestine. Below are some of them.
– By IAK Staff
While both the Israeli and Palestinian governments have committed human rights violations, the Israeli abuses have been far more numerous, significant, and causative.
Moreover, many Israeli abuses are directly connected with Israel’s decades-long military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, theft of Palestinian land, and imprisoning of Palestinians behind a barrier – all of which violate international law – as documented in the reports below.
In addition, it is important to remember that Israel was established in 1948 through a war of ethnic cleansing, as an Israeli historian and many others have documented. It is also important to be aware that Israel’s claim that it is in danger from Palestinian attacks is also inaccurate.
U.S. media, however, rarely report these facts.
For example, in the years 2000-2007, humanitarian organizations published 76 reports documenting Israeli human rights abuses, and four reports documenting Palestinian abuses. The New York Times reported on two of each.
The relative quantity, chronology, and circumstances of the deaths (documented here) among both populations reflect the disproportionate power of the Israeli military over Palestinian resistance groups. Again, we find, the U.S. media regularly distort this reality.
See a detailed timeline of Palestinians and Israelis killed since 2000 here.
See recent articles on human rights violations here.
See related videos here and here and here.
Human Rights Reports post-October 7th
Defense for Children International-Palestine: Palestinian children face unrelenting genocide, displacement, and systematic abuse throughout 2024 (December 2024)
Amnesty International: ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza (December 2024)
Human Right Watch: Israel’s Crime of Extermination, Acts of Genocide in Gaza (December 2024)
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: Unleashed: Abuse of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the center of Hebron (December 2024)
Peace Now (Settlement Watch Team): War and Annexation: How the Israeli Government Changed the West Bank During the First Year of War (October 2024)
Committee to Protect Journalists: No justice for journalists targeted by Israel despite strong evidence of war crime (October 2024)
Palestinian Center for Human Rights: Report on the Targeting of Journalists and Media Institutions in the Gaza Strip during the Genocide (October 2024)
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights: Scholasticide: Israel’s deliberate and systematic destruction of the Palestinian education system in Gaza (September 2024)
Oxfam: More women and children killed in Gaza by Israeli military than any other recent conflict in a single year (September 2024)
Human Rights Watch: Gaza: Israeli Military’s Digital Tools Risk Civilian Harm (September 2024)
Save the Children: A year of silence in Gaza’s classrooms: the urgent need for educational revival (August 2024)
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: Welcome to Hell: The Israel Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps (August 2024)
Amnesty International: Israel must end mass incommunicado detention and torture of Palestinians from Gaza (July 2024)
Oxfam: Water War Crimes: How Israel has weaponized water in its military campaign in Gaza (July 2024)
Addameer: Enforced Disappearance in the Palestinian Context (July 2024)
Committee to Protect Journalists: Attacks, arrests, threats, censorship: The high risks of reporting the Israel-Gaza war (July 2024)
Addameer: Arbitrary Administrative Detention A Crime with Unlimited Scope (July 2024)
UNICEF: Child casualties in the West Bank skyrocket in the past nine months (July 2024)
Israeli NGOs For Human Rights: State of the Occupation, Year 56 – a joint situation report (June 2024)
UN Human Rights Council: Indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks during the conflict in Gaza, October – December 2023 (June 2024)
Human Rights Watch: Gaza – Israelis Attacking Known Aid Worker Locations (May 2024)
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights: Inhumane Zones: Israel’s actions with respect to the provision of aid, shelter, safe passage, and assistance to evacuees in Gaza (May 2024)
Amnesty International: Shocking spike in use of unlawful lethal force by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (February 2024)
Save the Children: In Gaza, more than 10 children a day lose a limb in 3 months of brutal conflict (January 2024)
Addameer: Escalating oppression: Israel’s systematic violations intensify post-October 7th (January 2024)
Addameer: Light at the end of the tunnel: Solitary confinement in Israeli prisons (2024)
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: Manufacturing Famine: Israel is Committing the War Crime of Starvation in the Gaza Strip (2024)
Human Rights Reports, pre-October 7th
Below are a few of the multitude of reports documenting the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; a few address the situation for Palestinians within Israel itself. We will add new reports as they become available. Please check back often:
Save the Children: Injustice: Palestinian children’s experience of the Israeli military detention system (July 2023).
Committee to Protect Journalists: Deadly Pattern: 20 journalists died by Israeli military fire in 22 years. No one has been held accountable. (May 9, 2023).
Amnesty International: Automated Apartheid: How facial recognition fragments, segregates and controls Palestinians in the OPT (May, 2023).
Defense for Children – Palestine: 2022 Year-in-review: A deadly year for Palestinian children (At least 41 Palestinian children were killed).
Addameer and others: Palestinian people who experienced detention in 2022 (December, 2022) In 2022, the Israeli forces arrested ~7,000 Palestinians, and held over 2,400 in administrative detention.
United Nations: UN experts condemn record year of Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank (December 15, 2022) 2022 was the deadliest year in the West Bank since the United Nations started systematically documenting fatalities in 2005.
Save the Children: 2022 becomes the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the West Bank in over 15 years (November 23, 2022).
Save the Children: Trapped–The Impact of 15 years of blockade on the mental health of Gaza’s children (June 2022).
State of Palestine Negotiations Affairs Department:,A Scarred Childhood: Israeli Attacks against Palestinian Children in the Occupied West Bank in 2022 (April 12, 2022).
Harvard Law School/Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association: Apartheid in the Occupied West Bank: A Legal Analysis of Israel’s Action demonstrates in a short report that Israel practices apartheid (report here).
Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights: Parallel report for Israel’s fifth periodic review by the UN Human Rights Committee (April 4, 2022).
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME): Who Is Talking About Israeli Apartheid? – a list (not exhaustive) of notable organizations and individuals who have recently adopted, or expressed openness toward, the terminology of Israeli apartheid.
United Nations Human Rights Council: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (March 2022).
Amnesty International: ISRAEL’S APARTHEID AGAINST PALESTINIANS (2022).
Defense for Children International-Palestine: 2021 is deadliest year for Palestinian children since 2014 (December 2021).
Military Court Watch: Israeli Solitary Confinement of Children (December 7, 2021) “Palestinian children have been forcibly transferred from the West Bank to prisons inside Israel for 54 years and subjected to solitary confinement during interrogation for at least 30 years, possibly much longer. To date there has been no accountability.”
“Since the Second World War, the transfer of civilians, including detainees, out of occupied territory has been prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
UNICEF states: “In no circumstances whatsoever should a child be held in solitary confinement.”
“Since January 2019 there has been a surge in the use of solitary confinement in cases involving children with the evidence disclosing a rate of 19.7 percent between 2019 and May 2021, with the trend continuing to rise. It is estimated that at this current rate, between 100 to 200 children are now being held in solitary confinement each year…..” Read more – More information here.
Airwars, a UK-based nonprofit that tracks and documents civilian harm in conflict zones: “Why did they bomb us?” Urban civilian harm in Gaza, Syria and Israel from explosive weapons use” (December 2021).
Airwars, a UK-based nonprofit that tracks and documents civilian harm in conflict zones: Map of Civilian Casualties in Gaza, May 10th–20th 2021.
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: Unwilling and Unable: Israel’s Whitewashed Investigations of the Great March of Return Protests (December 2021) (summary here).
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: State Business: Israel’s misappropriation of land in the West Bank through settler violence (November 2021).
Defense for Children International-Palestine: No Way to Treat a Child (ongoing).
OCHA: monthly and bi-weekly reports from Palestine (covering various humanitarian issues – ongoing).
Human Rights Watch: Israel/Palestine: Facebook censors discussion of rights issues (October 2021).
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: Soldiers Hold Your Fire: On unlawful gunfire against protesters in the Return Marches in Gaza (June 2018, updated October 2021).
Human Rights Watch: Apparent war crimes by Israel during May 2021 attack on Gaza (July 2021).
ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions): Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes, a fact sheet (April 2021).
Physicians for Human Rights: Israel’s vaccine discrimination against Palestinians must end (March 2021).
No Thanksgiving for the Palestinian Children of Gaza: UN says Israelis deprived them of $16.7 Bn., potable water – Israeli authorities for three years actually calculated what would be necessary to keep the Palestinians of Gaza alive but without any fat on their bodies (so as to avoid the appearance they were being starved), and to keep goods allowed into the Strip to that level. They miscalculated, because stunting was observed among Palestinian children, to whom they pettily denied chocolate in specific.
Save the Children: Defenseless: The Impact of Israeli Military Detention on Palestinian Children (2020).
No Way to Treat a Child: Report: Isolated and Alone (December 2020).
UN: No Thanksgiving for the Palestinian children of Gaza: Israelis deprived them of $16.7B, potable water (November 2020).
Yesh Din, Physicians for Human Rights, Breaking the Silence: A Life Exposed: military invasions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank (November 2020).
World Health Organization: Health conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (November 2020).
UN expert: Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians illegal and an affront to justice (July 2020).
Yesh Din, Israeli human rights organization: The Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid: Legal Opinion (July 2020).
Human Rights Watch: Israel: Discriminatory Land Policies Hem in Palestinians (May 2020).
ICRC: Urgent intervention needed to protect Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons from COVID-19 exposure (April 2020).
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: Shoot and abandon: 155 amputees and 27 paralyzed in two years: How Israel punishes those who dare protest the siege of the Gaza Strip (January 2020).
Human Rights Watch: 92 page report: Israeli suspension of Palestinian rights is unlawful & unjustifiable (December 2019).
UN: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (October 2019).
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: Fake Justice: the responsibility Israel’s High Court justices bear for demolition of Palestinian homes and dispossession of Palestinians (February 2019).
Euro Med Monitor for Human Rights: Jerusalem: 477 Israeli violations in August (September 2019).
Amnesty Int’l: Israel discriminatory measures undermine Palestinian representation in Knesset (September 2019).
OCHA: Humanitarian Snapshot: casualties in the context of demonstrations and hostilities in Gaza, March 30 2018 – July 31 2019 (August 2019).
OCHA: Gaza Strip: early warning indicators (July 2019).
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: Conquer and Divide interactive map (June 2019).
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: After a year of protests in Gaza: 11 Military Police investigations, 1 charade (2019).
Defense for Children International-Palestine: Military Detention (2019).
Oxfam: Timeline: the humanitarian impact of the Gaza blockade ( 2018) e.g. Less than 16% of items needed to construct vital water infrastructure are reaching Gaza – While less than four percent of fresh water is drinkable…
Defense for Children Int’l-Palestine: Palestine year in review: 2018 rained deadly force on Palestinian children (December 2018).
Reporters Without Borders: RSF asks ICC to investigate Israeli sniper fire on Palestinian journalists (May 2018).
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: If the heart be not callous: On the unlawful shooting of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza (April 2018) (summary here).
B’Tselem, the Israeli Info Center for Human Rights in the oPt: Minors in Jeopardy: violation of the rights of Palestinian minors by Israel’s military courts (March 2018).
Red Cross: Israel: record low in Gaza medical permits (February 2018).
Christian Aid: Christian Aid condemns the killing of our partner volunteer in Gaza (2018).
Human Rights Watch: Israel: 50 Years of occupation abuses (June 2017).
Amnesty International: ‘Black Friday’: carnage in Rafah during 2014 Israel/Gaza conflict (July 2015).
Unicef: Children in Israeli military detention (February 2015).
National Lawyers Guild: NLG Palestine Subcommittee submits report to ICC refuting Israeli self-defense claim (February 2015).
Defense for Children Int’l-Palestine: Palestinian children being used as human shields (February 2015).
Amnesty International: Let’s be clear – Israel’s long-running settlement policy constitutes a war crime (August 2013).
Red Cross: ICRC says Israel’s Gaza blockade breaks law (June 2010).
Human Sciences Research Center of South Africa: Is Israel an Apartheid State? Rhetoric or Reality (March 2010).
UN: Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (September 2009).
U.S. State Department: U.S. says Israel may have violated cluster bomb use (January 2007).
Foreign Service Journal: Special Report: Israel’s treatment of Americans (June 2002).
National Institutes of Health: Cases of child malnutrition double in Gaza because of blockade (March 2002).
If Americans Knew is a nonprofit organization dedicated to giving Americans the facts on Israel-Palestine. The organization particularly focuses on information largely missing from U.S. media reports.
