The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
