On January 29, 2024, five-year-old Hind Rajab and her family were killed in Gaza, marking one of the most widely documented incidents of civilian harm during the ongoing conflict. For over 933 days, the circumstances surrounding her death remained a subject of intense international scrutiny. While Hind initially survived the initial gunfire, she was left trapped amidst the bodies of her relatives in a damaged vehicle, waiting for rescue that never arrived. Her desperate pleas for help, captured during a final phone call, transformed her into a global symbol of the civilian toll in Gaza.
For more than two years, Israeli authorities denied that their forces had fired upon the vehicle. This position eventually shifted to an acknowledgment that troops had been operating in the vicinity, and this week, the military officially announced the opening of a criminal investigation into the incident. The military stated that the probe would focus on alleged failures in coordinating the movement of a Palestine Red Crescent ambulance, alongside a separate investigation into the death of 15 medics and rescue workers in Rafah.
Nasir Qadri, an international law practitioner and scholar at Koc University, suggests that the timing of this announcement follows a familiar institutional pattern. According to Qadri, significant Israeli military investigations into the deaths of civilians, journalists, and aid workers typically follow a sequence of initial denial, followed by an extended review, and eventual closure without prosecution, often citing insufficient evidence or legitimate combat decisions.
The current legal context is critical to understanding this development. Israel is currently facing active proceedings at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and genocide referrals before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Under the Rome Statute’s complementarity regime, the ICC is designed to intervene only when a state is deemed unwilling or unable to conduct genuine investigations into its own nationals. By initiating domestic probes, a state can theoretically challenge the admissibility of cases before the ICC under Article 17 of the Rome Statute.
Qadri argues that the announcement is a strategic move to demonstrate a functioning domestic legal mechanism at a time when Israel’s position before international courts is increasingly difficult to defend. The Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation, which advocates for accountability, has rejected the investigation as a “masquerade” intended to preserve impunity. The group cites an independent review showing that of 52 publicly known Israeli military investigations into violations in Gaza and the West Bank, 88 percent were either closed without findings of wrongdoing or left open indefinitely.
A spokesperson for the Hind Rajab Foundation described the new probe as a charade designed to whitewash actions rather than deliver justice. The foundation maintains that given the historical lack of consequences from such internal reviews, this latest step appears aimed at deflecting international criticism. The family of Hind Rajab has also expressed a lack of confidence in the Israeli judiciary, asserting that the vehicle was deliberately targeted and calling for an independent international investigation to address the broader pattern of child casualties in Gaza.
Independent analysis of the incident revealed that 335 bullets were fired at the vehicle, with 64 shots discharged in a six-second window while the victim was still on the phone. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, who produced a film titled “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” dismissed the military’s announcement as a “smokescreen,” questioning the fate of countless other victims whose stories have not received similar international attention.
While Israel reports having referred over 1,000 wartime incidents to its internal review mechanism, resulting in 74 criminal cases, there remains no comprehensive public accounting of the status of these investigations. The skepticism surrounding this process is compounded by past precedents, such as the 2022 killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, where the military conceded a “high possibility” of soldier involvement but declined to open a criminal investigation. Simultaneously, the military recently closed a case regarding an April 2024 strike that resulted in the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen workers, further fueling doubts among rights advocates regarding the integrity of the current probe into Hind Rajab’s death. The report also notes that was heard by millions of people around the world, and it turned her into a symbol Israel has spent over two years trying, and failing, to bury along with her, her final phone call pleading for someone to come. The report also notes that that framing captures what two years of watching Israel investigate itself has taught rights groups and the family alike: an internal probe has never once translated into meaningful accountability for Palestinian deaths, and there is little in the record to suggest this case will be the exception. The report also notes that also, the same week Israel opened a criminal probe into Hind’s killing, it closed another case on the April 2024 strike that killed World Central Kitchen worker Zomi Frankcom and six colleagues, ruling out any criminal investigation despite the military’s own earlier admission that it had killed them “unintentionally. The report also notes that “Out of hundreds of cases raising criminal suspicion that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinian civilians, only three led to indictments, a prosecution rate of 0.87 percent,” Qadri says. The report also notes that “Israel’s own internal documents confirm that investigations do not need to produce convictions, they simply need to exist, exploiting Article 17 of the Rome Statute’s complementarity principle to sustain domestic proceedings as a jurisdictional bar against the ICC,” he explains. The report also notes that the Hind Rajab Foundation has already submitted to the ICC the names of Colonel Beni Aharon of the 401st Armored Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Ella of the 52nd Battalion, Major Sean Glass of the “Vampire Empire” Company and 22 other soldiers whose names it is withholding for now. The report also notes that 335 bullets tore through Hind’s car.