The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
