Israel Opens Criminal Probe After Admitting Troops Fired on Car Carrying Hind Rajab

Today’s Focus

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Wednesday confirmed for the first time that its soldiers opened fire on a car carrying five-year-old Hind Rajab and six of her relatives in Gaza City in January 2024, according to reporting from the BBC and The Guardian. All seven people in the Kia Picanto were killed.

The IDF said its Military Police Criminal Investigation Division will open a formal criminal probe into the killings, along with a separate investigation into the March 2025 deaths of 15 Palestinians, including medics and a United Nations worker, the BBC reported.

Hind initially survived the attack on 29 January 2024 and was reached by phone by the Palestine Red Crescent Society. The call lasted about three hours. She pleaded for rescue while trapped in the car with the bodies of her relatives, according to The Guardian.

An ambulance was dispatched in coordination with the Israeli army, both outlets reported. That ambulance was then shelled, killing paramedics Yusuf Zeino and Ahmad al-Madhoun. The bodies of Hind and her family were recovered 12 days later, after Israeli forces withdrew from the area, per The Guardian.

The IDF had repeatedly denied that its troops were in the area at the time. Independent investigations by media outlets and forensic researchers pointed to nearby Israeli tanks as responsible, The Guardian noted.

In its Wednesday statement, the IDF said its examination now “indicates that IDF troops fired at a vehicle” traveling “contrary to the advanced notice” published by the IDF Spokesperson to residents of the area, according to the BBC. The military cited “alleged failures in the co-ordination” of the ambulance’s movement as the basis for the criminal probe.

The Debate

Supporters argue

Israeli officials and defenders of the IDF’s process contend that the opening of a criminal investigation shows the military’s internal accountability system is working, even under wartime conditions. The IDF’s own statement, quoted by the BBC, framed the probe as the appropriate response once its fact-finding assessment identified potential coordination failures.

Supporters of the Israeli position note that the Military Advocate General’s office routinely reviews incidents involving civilian deaths and that criminal referrals, while rare, do occur. The IDF said in its statement that troops had been conducting “raids on terror targets” in the area, an argument the military has used to justify operations in dense civilian neighborhoods, per the BBC.

Some center-right commentators and Israeli government officials have argued that Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure in Gaza City complicates any coordination with medical crews. They point out that the IDF’s statement cited a prior evacuation notice the family’s car was said to have violated, according to reporting from both the BBC and The Guardian, as evidence that soldiers may have believed the vehicle posed a threat.

Critics argue

Palestinian officials, human rights groups, and the Palestine Red Crescent Society have argued the admission is long overdue and that a criminal probe cannot substitute for independent international investigation. The Red Crescent has said since 2024 that the ambulance’s movement was coordinated with Israeli authorities before it was struck, a point The Guardian reiterated.

Critics have pointed to the 19-month gap between the killings and Wednesday’s admission, and to the IDF’s earlier denials that its forces were present, as reasons to doubt the impartiality of a military-run inquiry. The Guardian noted that media forensic work, not the IDF’s initial internal review, established the presence of Israeli tanks near the scene.

Human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called for International Criminal Court jurisdiction over incidents like Hind’s death. Critics also link the case to the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom in April 2024, where Israel declined to prosecute, prompting what the BBC described as “outrage” from the Australian government.

What the experts say

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has documented systematic risks to medical workers in Gaza. As of mid-2025, OCHA and the World Health Organization reported more than 1,000 health workers killed in Gaza since October 2023, figures cited across major outlets including Reuters and the BBC.

Aryeh Neier, founder of Human Rights Watch and a longtime observer of laws-of-war compliance, has written that self-investigation by militaries into their own conduct has a poor historical record of producing prosecutions, a view echoed in a 2023 Chatham House analysis of accountability mechanisms in armed conflict.

Data from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem show that of hundreds of Military Police Criminal Investigation Division probes opened into IDF conduct in Gaza and the West Bank between 2000 and 2023, only a small fraction, under 5 percent by B’Tselem’s count, resulted in indictments. The International Committee of the Red Cross has repeatedly stated that under the Geneva Conventions, medical transport coordinated with a party to a conflict must be protected from attack.

By the Numbers

7: people killed in the Kia Picanto carrying Hind Rajab, according to The Guardian.

5: Hind Rajab’s age at the time of her death on 29 January 2024, per the BBC.

3 hours: approximate length of Hind’s phone call with the Palestine Red Crescent Society before contact was lost, according to The Guardian.

2: paramedics killed when the ambulance sent to rescue Hind was shelled, per the BBC.

12: days that passed before the bodies were retrieved, after Israeli forces withdrew from the area, according to The Guardian.

15: Palestinians, including medics and a UN worker, killed in the March 2025 incident that the IDF said it will also investigate, per the BBC.

Under 5%: share of Military Police Criminal Investigation Division probes into IDF conduct that resulted in indictments between 2000 and 2023, according to B’Tselem.