Hind rose to prominence as one of the most well-known victims of the war, and her story serves as a reminder of how hard it is to hold anyone accountable for the deaths of civilians in Gaza.
On Friday, calls were made again for Israel to look into the death of 6-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab, six members of her family, and the two paramedics who attempted to save her. The experts said that the incident “may amount to a war crime.” The experts were chosen by the UN Human Rights Council.
After the Palestinian Red Crescent Society captured Hind’s last phone calls pleading to be spared on Jan. 29, her voice became one of the most well-known victims of the war. Her story serves as a reminder of how hard it is to hold anyone accountable for civilian fatalities in Gaza.
Concerned about the “apparently unlawful killing, of a seemingly targeted nature,” the experts first brought up the matter in a letter to the Israeli government on March 19. They also requested information on the steps taken to ensure the safety of Gaza’s civilian population and to conduct a “independent, impartial and transparent” investigation.
The experts released a news release on Friday citing forensic analysis that shows the car Hind was trapped in was shot at “from very close range using a type of weapon that can only be attributed to the Israeli forces” after the letter had not been answered by July due to “the absence of proper investigation and accountability.”
When NBC News asked the Israel Defense Forces to comment on the accusations and the steps they had taken to look into the situation, the IDF replied the incident was “under review,” without giving any further information.
According to the experts, the family members “were shot dead while fleeing,” and there seems to be a “broader pattern of indiscriminate killings of civilians attempting to find shelter and escape the fighting in Gaza.”
The experts deemed the IDF’s assertion that its forces were not in the area where Hind was murdered, which they stated was “unacceptable,” considering the evidence of Israeli bombs found on the car, to be unverified immediately after the occurrence.
The IDF gave Hind and her family evacuation instructions in Arabic, so they got into the vehicle. The experts said that as they attempted to escape their Gaza City neighborhood, they were “shot dead,” leaving Hind the only one still alive—trapped inside the vehicle with the remains of her aunt, uncle, and four little cousins around her.
She begged to be saved for hours over the phone with her mother and the emergency personnel. She was discovered dead in the back of the automobile twelve days after the area opened to rescuers, fewer than fifty meters from the burned-out ambulance that held the bodies of the two paramedics who had been sent to save her.
While on the phone with rescue services, Hind’s 15-year-old cousin Layan Hamada, who also survived the first assault with Hind, reported seeing tanks approach. Before the connection was severed, Layan started to scream and there seemed to be gunshots. Hind replied when the emergency services called again, confirming Layan’s death.
This severity of executions, according to the experts, “illustrated how reckless the army has been in its Gaza campaign.”
A senior research scholar at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict in Britain, Emanuela-Chiara Gillard clarified that their statement has no legal significance and that Israel is the only country that has to look into these kinds of incidents.
“There’s no international body that has jurisdiction over this particular incident,” she said. “It’s a long-standing shortcoming in the international system.”
The Israeli military is criticized for its track record in pursuing claims of misbehavior. Out of 1,260 incidents in which Israeli troops were accused of crimes against Palestinians between 2017 and 2021, fewer than 1% of soldiers were charged, according to military statistics collected by the Israeli rights organization Yesh Din and published by The Associated Press. The information supports long-standing claims made by opponents and human rights organizations that inquiries into IDF murders of Palestinians reveal a practice of impunity.
At least 39,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict, according to Gaza health officials. The United Nations reports that at least 8,000 of those murdered were children, even though the statistics does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.
Experts nominated by the U.N. Human Rights Council said that Hind and her family’s murders were “not isolated cases,” citing the strike on a designated safe humanitarian zone last week that resulted in at least 90 fatalities, according to Gaza health authorities.
In order to ensure that any “violations of international law” could be credibly investigated, the experts urged the Israeli government to permit independent experts and international human rights monitoring bodies into Gaza. “Such attacks amount to grave violations of international humanitarian law, must be promptly and reliably investigated, and should be severely punished,” they said.
“It is imperative to stop the deliberate and random killing of individuals who are protected, such as civilians, medical professionals, and relief workers, since these acts constitute war crimes and, in cases where they occur on a regular basis, crimes against humanity.
