Hind Rajab killing: After 933 days of denial, will the IDF deliver accountability?

933 days after five-year-old Hind Rajab was killed in Gaza alongside six family members and two paramedics who came to save her, the IDF has finally admitted its soldiers fired on her car. Her mother says justice has not yet begun.

In Short

• Hind survived the first strike and called rescuers from inside the car
• Responder Rana Faqih stayed on the line for hours, keeping her calm
• Two paramedics nearing the family vehicle were later found dead nearby

On the morning of January 29th 2024, the Hamada family did what the Israeli military told them to do. They packed whatever they could carry, they put their children into a car, and they followed the evacuation route that Israeli forces had published for civilians fleeing northern Gaza. They followed the rules. They believed that following the rules would keep them safe.

It did not keep them safe.

Israeli forces opened fire on the vehicle as it moved along that route. Her uncle, her aunt and four of her cousins were killed in the car. One person survived that first attack. Her name was Hind Rajab. She was five years old, and she was now trapped inside a bullet-ridden vehicle, surrounded by the bodies of her family, unable to open the door, unable to get out, and entirely alone in the wreckage of a war that had been raging around her for months.

So she did the only thing a five-year-old child could think to do. She called for help.

The phone call that the world heard

The Palestine Red Crescent Society answered. A responder named Rana Faqih stayed on the line with Hind for hours, talking to her, keeping her calm, telling her that help was on the way. Hind told Rana that she was scared. She asked Rana not to hang up. Rana did not hang up. A recording of that call was later broadcast globally and drew immediate international condemnation, not only for what had happened to the child but for the circumstances in which she had been left to face it.

The PRCS dispatched two paramedics, Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, in an ambulance to reach her. They drove towards the car. They told their colleagues over the radio that they could see the vehicle. And then the line went dead. The sound of gunfire was heard before the connection was lost. Twelve days later, the bodies of Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun were found alongside Hind's, in the wreckage of the bullet-ridden car and the destroyed ambulance nearby. She had called for help. The people who came to save her had been killed too.

933 days of denial

For 933 days after Hind Rajab's killing, the Israel Defence Forces denied any involvement. In February 2025, more than a year after the attack, the IDF said its initial investigation had found that its forces were "not present near the vehicle or within firing range" of the vehicle. The institution had looked at itself and concluded it had nothing to answer for.

On August 19th 2026, the IDF admitted, for the first time, that its soldiers had fired on the car carrying Hind and her family, and on the ambulance dispatched to rescue her. It announced a criminal investigation into both killings. The announcement came as part of the IDF's first comprehensive report on alleged war crimes since the start of the conflict in October 2023, covering five high-profile incidents that had been under review by the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism. Two of the five were referred for criminal investigation. Three were closed with no further action.

What was cleared and what was not

The three cases that were closed without criminal investigation are worth examining in detail, because they reveal the pattern of accountability that Hind's family and her supporters say makes the new investigation meaningless.

The April 2024 attack on a World Central Kitchen humanitarian convoy in Deir al-Balah killed seven members of an international aid team who had coordinated their movements with the IDF in advance. The troops involved were cleared. No criminal investigation was opened. Also closed without investigation was a February 2024 strike on a Doctors Without Borders shelter in Khan Younis that killed two aid workers, and a November 2023 strike on an MSF convoy that killed two more. Seven international aid workers from one organisation and four from another, across three separate incidents, and not one of those cases warranted a criminal investigation according to the same institution now investigating the killing of Hind Rajab.

Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, which has spent years tracking military law enforcement concerning alleged harm to Palestinians, published data in 2025 showing that between 2018 and 2022, only one prosecution followed 219 Palestinian fatalities brought to the military's attention. That is a prosecution rate of 0.4 percent. Not 4 percent. 0.4 percent. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, has noted that even the single manslaughter conviction the system has ever produced against an IDF soldier for killing a Palestinian "stands unique in the long history of impunity enjoyed by Israeli forces."

The one conviction, and what happened to it

That single conviction belongs to Elor Azaria, an IDF medic who in March 2016 was filmed shooting dead Abed al-Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian man who had already been shot during an alleged knife attack and was lying wounded, incapacitated and motionless on the ground in Hebron. Azaria shot him in the head. The footage was recorded by an activist from the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem and distributed worldwide.

A military court found Azaria guilty of manslaughter in January 2017. His sentence of 18 months was subsequently reduced to 14 months by the IDF's chief of staff, and then further reduced by a parole board. He ultimately served nine months in prison for shooting a man in the head while he lay on the ground. And last month, in July 2026, Israel's Defence Minister asked President Isaac Herzog to expunge Azaria's criminal record entirely, years ahead of schedule. The one conviction the system ever produced is now being erased.

The case of Eyad Hallaq offers a second illustration of what accountability looks like in practice. In May 2020, Israeli Border Police officers shot dead Hallaq, a 32-year-old autistic Palestinian man, in Jerusalem's Old City. Officers reportedly mistook his phone for a weapon. He fled, was cornered, and was shot twice. He was unarmed, he was autistic, and he was terrified. The case drew immediate international comparisons to the police killing of George Floyd in the United States. An Israeli court acquitted the Border Police officer charged with reckless manslaughter. The justice system that is now being asked to investigate the killing of Hind Rajab is the same one that found no crime in the killing of Eyad Hallaq.

What Hind's family and her supporters are asking for

Hind's grandmother has said publicly that she has no faith in the Israeli military's investigation. The Hind Rajab Foundation, established after Hind's death to pursue legal accountability for her killing, said it has "no confidence in the Israeli military's reported decision to open criminal investigations." Rana Faqih, the Palestine Red Crescent responder who stayed on the phone with Hind in her final hours and whose account of that call has been widely reported, said that any investigation must be independent and neutral in order to carry credibility. The Palestinian Red Crescent has separately called for an international investigation, a position the UN Human Rights Office has echoed since shortly after the killings.

The Hind Rajab Foundation had, as of May 2026, submitted more than 90 complaints across 30 jurisdictions. By August 2026, that total had passed 100. The Foundation has also filed an Article 15 communication with the International Criminal Court naming officers it says were in the relevant chain of command. Those filings are allegations, not convictions, but they represent a parallel effort to seek accountability outside the Israeli military justice system that Hind's family says it cannot trust.

The film, and what it represents

In September 2025, a documentary film called "The Voice of Hind Rajab" premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. It was nominated for an Oscar in 2026. The nomination ensured that Hind's name continued to be heard in international forums at the highest level of cultural recognition, more than two years after her death. It also ensured that the IDF's denial of involvement remained part of the public record at precisely the moment when the investigation was being announced.

Hind Rajab was five years old. She followed the evacuation route that the Israeli military published. She sat in the backseat of a car travelling in the direction she had been told was safe. She survived the first attack. She called for help. She asked not to be left alone. She was killed. The paramedics who came to save her were killed. The institution responsible denied involvement for 933 days and then opened an investigation into itself, with a prosecution rate of 0.4 percent, using a system that acquitted the officer who shot dead an unarmed autistic man and that is currently in the process of erasing its one manslaughter conviction.

Hind's grandmother does not believe in Israeli justice. After 933 days of denial followed by a self-investigation from the institution that did the denying, it is a position that requires no explanation.

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