Hind Rajab’s family and aid groups seek outside investigations
The Associated Press reported that Israel’s military announced Wednesday its first criminal inquiries into troop conduct in Gaza, focusing on the Hind Rajab family case and the killing of 15 paramedics and emergency responders. The military said it had completed reviews of 150 incidents of troop conduct and made decisions in five cases. Beyond opening two inquiries, it ruled out criminal investigations into separate attacks that killed World Central Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders personnel.
Military investigators will now take up the two inquiries and present their findings to military prosecutors. The military advocate general can then keep an investigation open, indict soldiers involved or decline to charge them.
In the Rajab case, the military acknowledged firing at a car carrying Hind, four of her cousins, her aunt and her uncle as they fled an Israeli invasion of Gaza City. Hind was trapped in the vehicle with her slain relatives as gunfire struck around them. Her 15-year-old cousin, Layan Hamada, called the Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic center and told staff that her family had been killed. Seconds later, more shots were heard and Layan’s screaming stopped, according to a Red Crescent recording of the call.
Paramedics dispatched an ambulance to rescue Hind and stayed on the line with her until contact was lost. The military acknowledged that troops fired toward the ambulance and killed two medics. Hind, her five relatives and the two medics were found dead 12 days later.
A separate attack in March 2025 killed 15 medics and emergency responders from the Palestinian Red Crescent and Gaza’s Civil Defense. Israeli troops fired on an ambulance driving to retrieve casualties from an Israeli offensive in the southern city of Rafah, then fired on other emergency vehicles that came looking for the first vehicle, according to phone footage and the sole survivor. Troops then bulldozed the bodies and vehicles into a mass grave. U.N. and rescue workers reached the site a week later to dig out the bodies.
The military initially said the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” on troops without headlights or emergency signals. It later backtracked after footage showed the teams driving slowly with their emergency lights flashing and logos visible. A deputy commander was directed to step down over the killings.
The excluded cases included the April 2024 airstrikes on a World Central Kitchen convoy that killed seven staffers. The group, which distributes food in Gaza, said it had coordinated the convoy’s movement with the military. The vehicles bore the group’s logo on their roofs, visible from the air, and were left incinerated and mangled.
The military said individuals in the vehicles were mistakenly identified as armed Hamas operatives, but concluded that the commanders’ decisions “did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.” At the time, two officers were removed from their positions and three others were reprimanded.
World Central Kitchen said the military’s account of the strike was untrue, “conflates different timelines and events, muddies the story and shifts the blame,” and called for an independent investigation. U.S.-based World Central Kitchen founder and chef José Andrés condemned the decision on X as “wrong and painful.”
Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, expressed “outrage” at the outcome Thursday. She said the officers’ removal and reprimands were not sufficient accountability for the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom. Wong said unanswered questions remained and that her government would continue to pursue the matter.
The military also declined to take criminal action over the separate killings of four Doctors Without Borders staffers in November 2023 and February 2024. Its Wednesday statement did not mention other high-profile killings that Israel had pledged to investigate, including its August 2025 strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza that killed five journalists. Mariam Dagga, a visual journalist who freelanced for The Associated Press and other news organizations, was among those killed.
Hind’s grandmother, who is also named Hind Rajab, told The Associated Press by phone that the Israeli investigation was not enough. “An international investigation is required to uncover the truth and hold all those responsible accountable,” she said. “We call for justice, not only for Hind, but for all Gaza children.”
Dyab Abou Jahjah, director of the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation, told Al-Jazeera that he considered the military inquiries a “charade meant to whitewash the culprits instead of convicting them.” Palestinian Red Crescent spokesman Raed al-Nims told The Associated Press that “Israeli measures are not enough.”
Red Crescent spokesperson Eid Azizi said, “We are not obligated to prove the truth because it is already proven to the whole world.” He added, “We shouldn’t have reached this point if they respected and followed international humanitarian law.”
Tal Steiner, head of the Israeli rights group HaMoked, said any action would take a long time, if it came at all. “It’s very rare that soldiers accused of harming Palestinians even go to court … and even rarer that they get a severe punishment,” Steiner said. She recalled only one soldier who had spent time behind bars since Oct. 7, 2023, for alleged abuse of Palestinian prisoners. That soldier was imprisoned for seven months under a June 2025 plea bargain.
An analysis by the Israeli rights group Yesh Din found that 0.17% of all military investigations opened during three Gaza operations from 2014 to 2022 led to prosecution.
The wider war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel and abducted 251 others. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 73,000 people, including tens of thousands of women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
Rights groups and U.N. commissions have said the campaign amounts to genocide and that Israeli forces committed war crimes including indiscriminate use of force and deliberate killings of civilians. Israel denies the genocide and war-crime accusations, says it is targeting Hamas and attributes civilian deaths to the group’s operation in Gaza’s populated, overcrowded strip. Israeli officials contend that the country’s justice system can address troop violations, while rights groups say soldiers are almost never held accountable.
The announcement came nine months into a ceasefire. An NPR item accompanying the report said Israel then controlled nearly 70% of Gaza. Since the ceasefire took effect in October, Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,270 people, according to the Health Ministry. The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that U.N. agencies and independent experts consider generally reliable. It does not provide separate civilian and militant totals but says women and children constitute about half of the dead.
A docudrama about Hind’s death, “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” has won international awards and was nominated for an Oscar.