Israel’s military announced on Wednesday that it would initiate internal investigations into the deaths of Palestinian girl Hind Rajab in January 2024 and 15 emergency and aid workers in March 2025 in Gaza. Despite this, human rights organizations have pointed out that such investigations often do not result in convictions.
The military’s decision to launch investigations followed inquiries by its Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism, which led to rulings on five incidents involving Palestinian fatalities. Among these cases was the examination of the deaths of seven aid workers affiliated with the World Central Kitchen charity in April 2024. The military stated that there was no substantial evidence of criminal misconduct warranting a criminal investigation in that particular incident.
In a statement, the Israeli military highlighted the extensive combat operations it has been conducting across multiple fronts over the past thousand days in a highly complex operational environment. As part of its obligations under international and domestic laws, the military stated that it scrutinizes exceptional incidents occurring during combat.
The killings of Hind Rajab in February 2024 and the 15 Palestinian medics in May 2025 garnered international attention. However, Israeli rights groups emphasized that investigations into alleged criminal misconduct by Israeli soldiers in incidents involving Palestinian casualties rarely result in convictions.
According to a spokesperson for the Israeli rights organization Yesh Din, indictments against soldiers and commanders for offenses are almost nonexistent relative to the number of complaints lodged. When convictions do occur, the sentences handed down are often deemed disproportionately lenient compared to the gravity of the offenses.
Following the announcement of the investigations, Hind Rajab’s grandmother, also named Hind Rajab, expressed disbelief and lack of trust in Israel’s ability to conduct a thorough investigation. She called for other countries to independently investigate the circumstances surrounding her granddaughter’s death and the deaths of other children in Gaza, stressing the need for accountability for the killing of innocent individuals.
A report by UNICEF from last October revealed that at least 64,000 Palestinian children had been killed or injured since the start of the Gaza conflict in October 2023. Additionally, a United Nations Human Rights Council report in June accused Israeli security forces of intentionally targeting and killing Palestinian children in Gaza, a claim that Israel vehemently rejected as “propaganda.”
During Israel’s response to a Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, Hind Rajab found herself trapped in a car for hours, pleading for help from Palestinian medics via mobile phone. Despite her distress call, communication was lost when an ambulance arrived, and it took twelve days to recover the bodies of Hind, her family members, and two ambulance workers from the area.
A film depicting Hind Rajab’s tragic death, which sparked global outrage, won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival and received an Academy Award nomination. In March 2025, the bodies of 15 emergency and aid workers from various organizations were discovered in a grave in the southern Gaza Strip, prompting demands for answers and justice from UN aid chief Tom Fletcher and others.
Israeli forces maintain that they do not deliberately target civilians in the Gaza conflict and attribute civilian casualties to Hamas using them as shields. The Israeli military did not directly address the deaths of the Red Crescent workers initially but later stated that it facilitated the retrieval of the bodies from an active combat zone.
Red Crescent media director Eid Aziz emphasized the importance of protecting medical staff and the emblem of the Palestinian Red Crescent under international laws, stressing that such tragedies should have been prevented rather than investigated after the fact.