Israel said this week it would open a rare criminal investigation into the killing by the Israel Defense Forces of a Palestinian family in Gaza in 2024, including Hind Rajab, a young child whose calls to aid workers as she sat trapped in a car with the bodies of family members sparked international condemnation.
IDF fire resulted in the deaths of Hind, six members of her family and two aid workers attempting to rescue her, an Israeli fact-finding mission said in a statement.
The mission said it had also referred for criminal investigation the killing of some 15 people, including medical personnel and paramedics, in IDF attacks on emergency vehicles in Gaza, but that it had not found “reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct that would justify the opening of a criminal investigation” in several other “exceptional incidents,” including strikes that killed seven employees of the food relief group World Central Kitchen.
The decision on the Hind cases follows intense international public scrutiny, including a Washington Post investigation and Academy Award-nominated film.
The Israeli findings describe the “telephone call to rescue authorities, in which the two girls participated and later Hind alone.” Over 3½ hours, Layan and Hind, surrounded by bodies, pleaded with rescuers over the phone to help. Layan died during the string of phone calls, leaving the youngest to place calls by herself before she died.
The IDF said after the killings in 2024 that its forces were “not present near the vehicle or within the firing range” of the car in question, according to a preliminary investigation. Washington Post reporting found that those statements contradicted visual forensics evidence.
In a post to social media Thursday, Wesam Hamada, Hind’s mother said that Israel opening an investigation is a “long-overdue step” but is “not justice.” Overlaid on a photo of Hind in a dress, she wrote, “this is a response to my daughter’s killers,” calling for an independent, transparent inquiry instead of a “closed military investigation.”
“Hind was a frightened and injured child, trapped inside the car among the bodies of her family members, pleading with the world to save her. … Why was there no investigation when Hind was begging for help?” she wrote.
“Hind is not just a news story or a case reopened because of international pressure. Hind is my daughter, and I will continue to demand the truth and justice for her, my family, and the paramedics who tried to save her.”
Hind was 5 at the time she was killed, Hamada said. Earlier Washington Post stories reported she was 6, based on conversations with emergency dispatchers at the time.
Since the start of the war, the Israeli military said, its independent fact-finding mechanism has taken under review about 150 “exceptional incidents that occurred during combat,” most of which remain open.
More than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants. Israeli strikes in Gaza continue, with the ministry reporting 17 dead and about 50 injured in recent days.
In addition to the Hamada case, the IDF on Wednesday announced it would open a criminal investigation into a March 2025 incident in which IDF forces shot at a convoy that included a fire truck, ambulances, and a Palestinian U.N. vehicle, killing 15 people, including paramedics. “After the incident, the troops decided to crush the vehicles and to cover the bodies with metal mesh,” the Israel military said.
Israel said it would not launch criminal investigations into the November 2023 killing of two Médecins Sans Frontières employees in Gaza City, the deaths of two MSF employees in a February 2024 strike on a building in Khan Younis or the killing of seven World Central Kitchen employees in April 2024.
The “IDF mistakenly believed that the vehicles contained Hamas military operatives and therefore struck the vehicles,” the statement read, in reference to the Israeli strikes that killed the World Central Kitchen workers.
The announcement came amid ongoing fighting in Gaza.
Israel’s continued attacks have become a source of contention with the U.S. as its negotiators try to break a stalemate over President Donald Trump’s nearly year-old peace plan.
According to Gaza health authorities, more than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since a truce agreement last October, beginning with the release of all Hamas-held hostages and a nominal ceasefire.
For most of this year, progress toward reconstituting a Palestinian government in Gaza and other aspects of the plan have been stalled: Israel refuses to halt attacks or withdraw troops that occupy more than 60 percent of Gaza and are set to remain until Hamas forces in the rest of the territory is completely disarmed, while Hamas continues to insist that Israel must end the strikes before the group begins demilitarizing.
In talks in Jerusalem on Monday between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jared Kushner, a U.S. negotiator and Trump’s son-in-law, the U.S. side said Israel is permitted under the plan to defend itself against planned attacks or “imminent” threats.
Trump’s plan also calls for amnesty to be offered to militants who lay down their arms, including those who participated in the Oct. 7, attack.
U.S. officials question whether many of this year’s strikes meet those criteria and said that at Monday’s talks, it was agreed that a special international commission would be set up to judge whether the standards are being met.
Since then, however, Israeli attacks appear to have escalated. On Tuesday, a strike on a seaside cafe reportedly killed seven people, including a child, according to local hospitals.
On Wednesday, at least 10 people were reported killed in two separate strikes, one at a police station and another that the Israel Defense Forces said killed four Hamas commanders “involved in advancing terror attacks against IDF troops,” one of which it said was involved in October 2023 Hamas attacks.
“The problem is [Israel] agreed to all these things last year,” said an official with the Trump-appointed Board of Peace, which he created to implement the peace plan.
“They seem to be unable to show anything that might look like a concession or softening,” especially in the lead-up to Israeli elections in October, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations.
Westfall, Kelly and DeYoung reported from Washington and Soroka from Tel Aviv.
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