Israel Finally Admits Responsibility for Killing Five-Year-Old Hind Rajab

The Israeli military has finally admitted to opening fire on the car carrying Hind Rajab.

Israel has long denied that any troops were present in the Tel-al-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City where the five-year-old and her family were killed on 29 January 2024.

But on Wednesday, the Israeli military announced that it would open a criminal investigation into both Rajab’s death and a separate incident in March 2025, in which Israeli troops killed 15 Palestinian medics and buried them in a mass grave.

Investigations by the Washington Post, Sky News and Forensic Architecture had already concluded that Rajab and six family members were fleeing Gaza when Israeli forces opened fire on their car. Israeli soldiers then shelled the ambulance dispatched to rescue Rajab, killing two medics.

The bodies of Rajab, her family and two Palestinian Red Cross paramedics were not recovered until 10 February 2023, when Israeli forces left the area. 

Rajab’s killing became one of the most reported crimes in the early months of the genocide in Gaza, after a recording of Rajab’s three-hour phone call to Palestinian paramedics was broadcast on global news networks. 

The story of Rajab’s death was later made into an Oscar-nominated film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, and cited in a UN commission of inquiry accusing Israel of war crimes. 

The Hind Rajab Foundation, founded in 2024 to hold Israel accountable for war crimes in Gaza, said the Israeli investigation “should not be mistaken for a genuine step toward justice”.

“We do not trust the Israeli justice system, not out of an ideological position, but because of the track record,” said its director, Dyab Abou Jahjah. 

Only a “tiny percentage” of Israeli criminal investigations into the killing of Palestinians have produced convictions in the last decades, according to Dan Owen, a researcher at Israeli rights organisation Yesh Din.