- June 10, 2026
- 4:25 pm
- Middle East
The UN report on Hamas crimes in the Gaza Strip was a rare moment when an international body directly described not only Israel’s war with the terrorist organization but also the internal terror against the enclave’s own residents.
On June 9, 2026, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the situation in the Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel presented a report where the actions of Hamas militants and their controlled police structures are classified as war crimes.
The essence of the document is harsh: in the Gaza Strip, people were not only intimidated but also beaten, maimed, publicly executed, accused of collaborating with Israel, looting, stealing humanitarian aid, drug crimes, or ties with rival Palestinian groups.
For the Israeli audience, the importance of this report lies not only in the legal formulation. The fact itself is important: the international commission recorded that Hamas used fear as a system of governance within Gaza.
What exactly did the UN commission record
According to the report, from August 2024 to January 2026, 249 incidents of extrajudicial punishment were documented in the Gaza Strip. These episodes resulted in the deaths of 108 people.
In almost a quarter of the cases, the commission established the direct involvement of police or militants associated with Hamas. At the same time, investigators separately note: it was not only about Hamas but also about other local armed formations that operated in the war-torn territory.
The methods were demonstratively brutal.
People were shot.
They were shot in the knees.
Bones were crushed with iron pipes and concrete blocks.
The beaten were displayed publicly, and video recordings were spread further so that fear worked not only at the place of execution but also afterward — in phones, chats, conversations, rumors.
It did not look like chaos of separate gangs. The report describes a practice of intimidation through which Hamas’s security structures and associated groups tried to regain control over the population, suppress criticism, and show who decides who lives and who will be declared a ‘traitor’.
Who was punished and for what
Not only those suspected of collaborating with Israel were targeted. The list of accusations includes looting, theft of humanitarian goods, ordinary thefts, drugs, tobacco trade, connection with rival Palestinian factions, and participation in local clans that did not obey Hamas.
A separate part of the report concerns minors. According to the commission, children and teenagers were also subjected to humiliation, beatings, and public disgrace, accused of petty theft, smuggling, or illegal trade.
This is an important detail because it breaks the usual propaganda picture. For years, Hamas tried to present itself as the ‘protector of Palestinians’, but the UN report shows another side: when the group’s power was threatened, it acted against the residents of Gaza as a punitive machine.
‘Shifa’, Khan Yunis, and public executions
The report provides verified video recordings and eyewitness testimonies. One of the episodes occurred in September 2025 near the ‘Shifa’ hospital in Gaza City. In front of a crowd, masked people shot three bound men with blindfolds.
A month later, in October 2025, a similar execution took place in the center of Gaza City. Eight people were publicly executed in the square. They were declared traitors and agents of Israel.
Such scenes were not hidden. On the contrary, they were shown.
And this is the main meaning of terror: the execution was supposed to be a message for everyone else. Do not argue. Do not criticize. Do not ask questions about humanitarian aid. Do not seek alternative power. Do not support local clans that could weaken Hamas’s control.
Witnesses also reported punitive actions on the territory of medical institutions, including the ‘Nasser’ complex in Khan Yunis. International experts separately noted: Hamas’s internal crimes on hospital grounds do not in themselves remove the protected status of medical facilities under international humanitarian law.
For Israel, this formulation is controversial and painful because the Israeli side has claimed for years: Hamas systematically uses hospitals, schools, mosques, and humanitarian infrastructure as cover for military activity. But even within the cautious language of the UN, the report highlights the main point: Hamas indeed operated within civilian spaces where healing should have taken place, not executions.
Why this is important for Israel
Israelis understand well what Hamas is after October 7, 2023. It is not an abstract ‘armed group’ from diplomatic documents but a terrorist organization that carried out a massacre in southern Israel, kidnapped hostages, used tunnels, civilian infrastructure, and human shields.
But the new report is also important because it shows: Hamas is dangerous not only for Israel.
It is also dangerous for the Palestinians it uses as cover.
When international platforms discuss the Gaza Strip, too often the whole picture is reduced to one question: what is Israel doing. The report from June 9, 2026, expands the frame. It shows that within Gaza, there is its own system of violence, where Hamas and its associated structures decide people’s fates without trial, lawyer, evidence, and the right to defense.
That is why NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency considers this report not as a dry UN document but as an important testimony about the real structure of Hamas’s power. For Israel, for Israelis, for immigrants from Ukraine and the former USSR, everything here is too familiar: dictatorship always starts with ‘enemies’, then expands the list, and then fear becomes the main law.
The UN called it war crimes
The commission concluded that the recorded killings and extrajudicial executions fall under the definition of war crimes. It also concerns gross violations of international humanitarian law and basic human rights — the right to life, personal integrity, freedom, and a fair trial.
The report separately emphasizes: after the truce in October 2025, which ended the two-year war with Israel, Hamas began to restore administrative and security control over territories where its influence had weakened. It was during this period, according to the commission, that reprisals against those the group considered a threat to its power intensified.
Commission Chairman Srinivasan Muralidhar stated that the violations occurred in conditions created by war and the destruction of governance infrastructure. But even this attempt to explain the context does not change the essence: punishments were carried out by Hamas’s police and military wing bypassing judicial procedures.
That is, it is not about justice.
It is about power through fear.
What this report changes
Politically, the report is inconvenient for many. For Hamas — because it breaks the image of ‘resistance’ and shows the terrorist organization as a structure that kills and maims its own population. For some international activists — because it disrupts the simple scheme where only Israel is to blame, and Palestinian armed groups seem to disappear from the frame.
For Israel, the document is also important, but not as a reason to relax. On the contrary, it shows how complex the war has become after October 7: Israel is fighting not with a regular army but with an organization that simultaneously conducts military operations, controls humanitarian flows, keeps the population in fear, and uses civilian space as part of its survival system.
In this sense, the UN report from June 9, 2026, records what has long been said in Israel: Hamas is not only a threat at the border, not only rockets, tunnels, and hostages. It is a regime of internal terror that turns the Gaza Strip into a territory where a person can be publicly beaten, maimed, or shot without trial because someone in a mask called them a ‘traitor’.
And if the international community truly wants to talk about Gaza’s future, it cannot ignore this issue.
You cannot build peace on the power of those who turn hospitals, squares, and streets into places of execution.