Israel's military admitted it fired on the car that killed five-year-old Hind Rajab

On Wednesday the Israeli military said, for the first time, that its troops fired at the car carrying five-year-old Hind Rajab and members of her family as they tried to flee Gaza City in January 2024. For more than two years the army's line had been that its forces were not near the vehicle and not within firing range. That sentence is now gone.

Hind's cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamada, called the Palestinian Red Crescent while gunfire hit the car. Seconds later more shots were heard and Layan stopped screaming, according to the recording the Red Crescent has released. Hind stayed on the line for hours. An ambulance was coordinated to reach her. The military now says a shell was fired at that ambulance, and the two paramedics in it were killed. Hind, her relatives and the two medics were found dead 12 days later.

The admission sits inside a wider set of reviews. The military said it had looked at 150 incidents of troop conduct in Gaza and taken decisions on five. It is opening criminal investigations into Hind's killing and into the March 2025 Rafah ambush that killed 15 Palestinian paramedics, whose bodies were later found under a mass grave. It will not open a criminal investigation into the April 2024 airstrikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen staff, including Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom. It said commanders had mistaken people in the vehicles for armed Hamas operatives, and that their decisions did not raise a reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct. Two officers were removed at the time. Three were reprimanded. José Andrés, who founded World Central Kitchen, called the decision wrong and painful.

Hind's grandmother, also named Hind Rajab, told the Associated Press that an Israeli investigation is not enough, and that she wants an international one. The Palestinian Red Crescent said the same. I understand why. Israeli rights group Yesh Din has counted how rarely these files become prosecutions: 0.17 percent of military investigations from three Gaza operations between 2014 and 2022 led to a charge. An admission that troops fired, two years after a denial that they were even nearby, is a fact. Whether it becomes a conviction is a different question, and the record does not encourage you.

Military police will investigate and send their findings to military prosecutors. The military advocate general can indict, keep digging, or close the file. Hind's family will keep asking for a process that does not sit inside the same army that fired the shots. The film about her last phone call, The Voice of Hind Rajab, was nominated for an Oscar. The investigation is only just starting.