Israel’s military announced on Wednesday that it would conduct 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 noted that such inquiries seldom result in convictions.
The military stated that these investigation decisions were made following examinations by its Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism, which issued findings on five incidents involving Palestinian fatalities. Among these incidents was a review of the deaths of seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen charity in April 2024. The military concluded that there was no evidence of criminal misconduct warranting a criminal investigation in that particular case.
Highlighting the challenging operational environment faced by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) over the past few years, the military emphasized its commitment to investigating exceptional incidents that occurred during combat, as required by international and domestic laws.
The killings of Hind Rajab in February 2024 and the 15 Palestinian medics in May 2025 garnered global attention. However, Israeli rights groups expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of criminal misconduct investigations involving Israeli troops in cases of Palestinian fatalities, citing low conviction rates.
Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization, criticized the limited number of indictments and lenient sentences handed down to soldiers and commanders found guilty of offenses. Hind Rajab’s grandmother, also named Hind Rajab, expressed doubt about Israel’s ability to conduct impartial investigations and called for international scrutiny into her granddaughter’s death and the treatment of children in Gaza.
UNICEF reported last October that around 64,000 Palestinian children had been killed or injured since the start of the Gaza conflict in October 2023. In a separate development, 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 dismissed as propaganda.
During the 2023 Gaza conflict, Hind Rajab found herself trapped in a car for hours, pleading for help from Palestinian medics via mobile phone as her family members lay dead nearby. The subsequent recovery of the bodies, including those of two ambulance workers, attracted worldwide attention and led to the production of a film that garnered critical acclaim.
In March 2025, the bodies of 15 emergency and aid workers were discovered in a grave in the southern Gaza Strip, with UN officials highlighting their efforts to save lives amidst the conflict. The Red Crescent media director emphasized the need for the protection of medical staff engaged in humanitarian work, stressing that such personnel should be safeguarded under international laws.
Despite Israeli forces denying deliberate targeting of civilians, questions surrounded the circumstances of the workers’ deaths, with demands for accountability and justice. The military’s response to inquiries about the incident underscored the complexities of operating in an active combat zone.