The Israeli military has closed its investigation into the strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers in central Gaza on 1 April 2024. Investigators concluded that the forces involved believed at the time that the vehicles carried Hamas operatives, and found that the decisions taken by the commanders on the ground did not cross the threshold for a criminal case. Two senior officers had already been removed from their posts over the strike before the file was closed.
A separate and far more serious file remains open. On 29 January 2024 an Israeli strike hit a car in Gaza City carrying six year old Hind Rajab and six members of her family. Two paramedics sent to reach her were killed soon after when the ambulance itself came under fire, bringing the total dead to nine. The Military Advocate General ordered a criminal investigation into that incident, and it has not been concluded.
The two rulings sit on either side of a line the military draws between a mistaken strike and a case that needs a criminal answer. A third file from Rafah, where fifteen Palestinians were killed near ambulances in March 2025, also produced a criminal investigation, and this time a deputy commander was removed and the brigade commander formally censured while that inquiry proceeds.
Two other incidents involving Doctors Without Borders, in Khan Younis in February 2024 and on a convoy route in November 2023, were closed without criminal investigations, in one case for lack of current information about the building and in the other because the deaths followed warning shots rather than direct fire. Together the five files describe an internal standard: an error in identification closes a case, a strike whose facts remain contested does not.