KVIG Informative

For two years, Israel said its soldiers weren’t near the car. On Wednesday, it admitted they fired on it, then opened a criminal probe into the killing of a five-year-old girl.

Hind Rajab died in Gaza City on January 29, 2024, after Israeli forces opened fire on the car carrying her and six family members as they tried to flee an Israeli advance. She survived the initial shooting and spent hours on the phone with Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics, pleading for rescue. An ambulance dispatched to reach her also came under fire. Her body was found 12 days later in a car riddled with bullets.

The Israel Defense Forces initially denied any involvement, saying a preliminary review found its troops were not present near the vehicle or within firing range. That position held for two years, through journalistic investigations, including one by Al Jazeera, and a war crimes complaint filed with the International Criminal Court in May 2025 by the Hind Rajab Foundation, a Brussels-based legal group that named a specific lieutenant colonel and laid groundwork for lawsuits against battalion officers in national courts.

On Wednesday, after reviewing 150 incidents of troop conduct, the military reversed itself. IDF troops fired at a vehicle that was approaching them, the statement read. Citing apparent failures in coordinating the Red Crescent ambulance’s movement, the military said it would open a criminal investigation through its Military Police Criminal Investigation Division. It is the first time Israel has acknowledged shooting at the car at all.

The same announcement covered four other high-profile incidents. The military opened a second criminal probe into the March 2025 killing of 15 Palestinian medics and humanitarian workers near Rafah, whose bodies were found in a mass grave and later exhumed by United Nations rescue teams. It declined to open investigations into three other cases: the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers and four Doctors Without Borders staff, saying it found no reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct that would justify one.

Hind’s mother, Wesam Hamada, called the investigation a long-overdue step but said justice has not yet begun, adding that she does not want a closed military investigation. Israel’s foreign ministry framed the probe differently, saying it demonstrates Israel to be a law-abiding democracy that thoroughly investigates claims of misconduct. Dyab Abou JahJah, president of the Hind Rajab Foundation, rejected that framing outright, saying decades of Israeli crimes against Palestinians have not delivered any serious form of justice and that he does not expect this case to be the exception.

Military investigations into the killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces rarely result in convictions. That history is precisely why the admission matters more than the probe it triggered. Israel spent two years denying its soldiers were even in range. The truth took an ICC complaint, international pressure, and the review of 150 separate incidents to surface. What it takes to get a conviction is still an open question.