Israel’s military announced on Wednesday that it will initiate internal inquiries into the deaths of Palestinian girl Hind Rajab in January 2024 and 15 emergency and aid workers in Gaza in March 2025. Despite this, rights organizations argue that such investigations seldom result in convictions.
The military’s decision to investigate stemmed from assessments conducted by its Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism, leading to determinations on five incidents involving Palestinian fatalities. One of the incidents examined the deaths of seven aid workers affiliated with the World Central Kitchen charity in April 2024, with the military stating that there was no justifiable suspicion of criminal wrongdoing warranting a formal investigation.
Highlighting the complexity of their operational activities, the Israeli military emphasized its commitment to examining exceptional incidents in compliance with international and domestic laws. The killings of Hind Rajab in February 2024 and the 15 Palestinian medics in May 2025 garnered international attention.
Israeli rights groups have raised concerns about the lack of convictions in criminal misconduct investigations involving Israeli soldiers in Palestinian deaths. According to a spokesperson for the Israeli organization Yesh Din, indictments are extremely rare relative to the number of complaints, and when convictions do occur, the sentences are notably lenient given the gravity of the offenses.
Hind Rajab’s grandmother, also named Hind Rajab, expressed shock at the military’s announcement and voiced distrust in Israel’s ability to conduct a fair investigation. She called for other countries to probe the circumstances surrounding her granddaughter’s death and advocated for accountability for the killing of innocent children in Gaza.
UNICEF reported last October that over 64,000 Palestinian children had been killed or injured since the onset of the Gaza conflict in October 2023. Additionally, a United Nations Human Rights Council report in June accused Israeli security forces of deliberately targeting and killing Palestinian children in Gaza, a claim that Israel dismissed as propaganda.
During the military offensive in response to a Hamas-led attack in October 2023, Hind Rajab was trapped in a car for hours, pleading for help via mobile phone while her relatives and ambulance workers lay dead nearby. Following the recovery of their bodies twelve days later, a film depicting Hind Rajab’s ordeal received international acclaim and recognition.
In March 2025, the bodies of 15 emergency and aid workers were discovered buried in the sand in southern Gaza. UN officials revealed that the workers, from organizations like the Red Crescent and Palestinian Civil Defense, were killed by Israeli forces while attempting to rescue individuals. Calls for answers and justice were made by UN aid chief Tom Fletcher in response to the tragic incident.
Israeli forces maintain that they do not intentionally target civilians in the Gaza conflict, attributing civilian casualties to Hamas using them as shields. While the Israeli military did not directly address the deaths of the Red Crescent workers initially, it later facilitated the retrieval of the bodies from an active combat zone without elaborating on specifics.
Eid Aziz, the media director for the Red Crescent, stressed the importance of protecting medical personnel operating under the organization’s emblem, citing international laws safeguarding their work and emphasizing the necessity of prevention over post-incident investigations.