Autopsy reports obtained by the New York Times reveal some of the Gaza medics killed by Israeli troops last month were shot in the head and chest.
The Israeli military refused to comment on the report, instead saying it wouldn’t provide comment until its probe is complete.
Israel’s military launched a preliminary investigation into the killings of 15 Palestinian Red Crescent workers on 23 March by soldiers belonging to the Golani Brigade, who then buried the bodies in a shallow grave.
The army has continued to claim that at least six of those killed were Hamas militants, without providing evidence, and denies that those killed were executed. The army also asserts that troops buried the bodies so wild dogs wouldn’t eat the corpses, and that this wasn’t an attempt to hide the bodies, as they informed the UN of the grave’s location.
An Israeli military report admitted on Sunday that mistakes led to the medics' deaths and that a field commander would be dismissed, but said it found no evidence of "indiscriminate fire" by soldiers. The Palestine Red Crescent rejected the findings, calling them "full of lies".
As Israel’s investigation had proceeded and new evidence emerged, the army changed its account several times. First, the army claimed they opened fire on vehicles that had their lights off, but when video footage surfaced showing the medics were travelling in a clearly labelled vehicle with red flashing lights, the Israeli military then said its initial account was mistaken.
“This follows exactly the Israeli pattern that we have now memorised, because it's the same each and every time,” Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former spokesperson of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), told The New Arab.
She explained that Israel first denies the incident occurred, then justifies the attack, saying those killed were combatants or the violence was done out of military necessity, and then, when evidence is revealed, the military conducts an investigation.
“And then you're going to see step four which is, ‘We've conducted an investigation and found that there was nothing that was wrong,” Buttu said.
A system that protects itself
Israel’s system of internal investigations is designed in a way that limits accountability. Known as the General Staff Mechanism for Fact-Finding Assessments (FFA), this body is tasked with initially investigating alleged violations of the laws of war and then determining, with Israel’s Military Advocate General, whether to launch a criminal investigation.
A 2024 report conducted by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din found that this mechanism, though, isn’t doing its job.
Instead, the data compiled by Yesh Din in the last decade shows the mechanism rarely opens investigations against junior-ranking soldiers and never investigates decision-makers at the top. A core component of this mechanism’s failure to launch investigations is that the process of handling complaints takes an exceedingly long time to complete.
“The FFA Mechanism’s slow pace points to a failure that can be suspected as an intentional flaw in the military law enforcement mechanism,” Yesh Din wrote.
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A lengthy timetable is not only against international standards, but also prolongs a criminal investigation from being opened. And if a case is opened, the long amount of time lapsed between the incident and the investigation serves to impede efforts in collecting sound evidence and testimonies.
Additionally, the material gathered from the FFA mechanism is confidential and prohibited from being passed to the criminal investigation, meaning all procedures to collect evidence and statements must begin all over again if a probe is opened.
“It proved to be totally unsuccessful,” Smadar Ben-Natan, an Israeli legal scholar and University of Oregon professor, told TNA. “And the cases when there has been an investigation even opened, not to mention produce some kind of accountability, are near zero.”
According to Yesh Din’s research, a little over 80% of incidents transferred to the FFA Mechanism from 2014-2024 were closed without a criminal investigation opened. Only 6% led to launching a criminal investigation and only one resulted in an indictment.
The ineffective framework of Israeli investigations has led many Palestinian and Israeli rights groups, like B’Tselem, to stop filing complaints altogether to the military.
“There is no real alternative for truly independent, prompt, and impartial investigations on the ground,” Ben-Natan said. “These things just remain in the ether. They evaporate.”
Naji Abbas, director of the prisoners and detainees’ department at Physicians for Human Rights - Israel, knows firsthand the systemic impunity embedded in Israel’s law enforcement and military.
“The first purpose of these investigations is not revealing the truth. It is to protect the people who committed the crime in front of the international courts,” Abbas said, with Israel’s legal system not serving justice but rather acting as a shield for Israeli soldiers.
Yet the futility of Israel’s internal investigations is only one part of the problem. While the investigative measures perpetuate this cycle of impunity, so too does the Israeli mindset.
“How is it that a society lets this happen?” Buttu said. “Why aren't they outraged? Why aren't they saying these people are not targets? That's the part that is killing me…There’s no internal moral compass.”
Accusations of torture and sexual abuse at Israel’s Sde Teiman military detention centre last year eventually prompted the military to open an investigation, which was then met with a fierce show of support for the suspects culminating in crowds of Israelis, led by government officials, breaking into the facility during the soldiers’ interrogation.
“Israeli society, in fact, not only tolerates, but actively supports attacks on Palestinians under any condition,” Ben-Natan said.
“The dehumanisation of Palestinian lives, especially in Gaza in the last year and a half, is just unthinkable - from the government, from the media, from so many sources in Israeli society that produced this mindset that Palestinian lives just don't matter.”
While Ben-Natan attributes this level of dehumanisation to an increasing volume of influential, right-wing voices within Israel, for Buttu this is simply part of Israel’s founding DNA.
“The only way that the Nakba could have been carried out is through mass dehumanisation,” Buttu said, referring to the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians by Zionist militias prior to and during Israel’s founding.
“And because there's never been a reckoning of that mass dehumanisation. It's continued to this very day,” Buttu added. “This is the ethos of the state.”
Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist covering Palestine and Israel. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The National, and Gulf News
Follow her on Twitter: @jess_buxbaum