Transparency & Accountability
Israel's army probes Hind Rajab's killing but closes three aid-worker files
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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The Israeli military has opened criminal investigations into the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab and into the killing of fifteen paramedics in Rafah, and decided at the same time that three attacks that killed international aid workers will not go to criminal investigation at all.
The decisions were announced on Wednesday, in a statement reported by NPR, and cover five cases out of about 150 incidents of troop conduct in Gaza that the military says its review mechanism has now examined.
Hind Rajab was killed in Gaza City in February 2024. Israeli troops fired on the car she was in with her aunt, uncle and four cousins as the family tried to flee.
The child survived long enough to plead for help by telephone, and the ambulance crew sent to reach her was fired on too, killing two paramedics. Independent experts of the United Nations Human Rights Council have said the killing may constitute a war crime.
The second case is the killing of fifteen Palestinian medics and rescue workers in Rafah in March 2025 — Red Crescent paramedics and Civil Defence crews shot in their marked vehicles, their bodies then pushed into a sand grave along with the ambulances.
The three files that were closed#
The military said it would not open criminal investigations into the strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen staff in April 2024, or into two attacks that killed four Doctors Without Borders staff in November 2023 and four more in February 2024.
In the World Central Kitchen case, the military repeated that the convoy's personnel had been "mistakenly identified as armed Hamas operatives" and said the commanders' decisions "did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct".
José Andrés, the chef who founded World Central Kitchen, called the decision "wrong and painful". The organisation said the military's account was untrue and "conflates different timelines and events", and asked for an independent investigation.
Penny Wong, Australia's foreign minister, expressed outrage at the outcome, saying dismissals and reprimands were not an adequate answer for the killing of the Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom.
Why Palestinians read the announcement carefully#
The numbers behind Israel's military justice system explain the caution. Of the investigations opened into Israeli operations in Gaza between 2014 and 2022, 0.17 percent ended in prosecution. Since October 2023, one soldier has served a prison sentence connected to conduct in the war — seven months, under a plea deal reached in June 2025 in a case of abusing a detainee.
Raed al-Nims, spokesman for the Palestine Red Crescent Society, said Israeli measures are not enough. Hind Rajab's grandmother said an international investigation is what the family wants.
An opened investigation is not a charge, and a charge is not a conviction. What changed this week is that two of the most documented killings of the war are now formally in the hands of the military police, and three others have been closed to criminal scrutiny by the same office on the same day.
