Israel closes 88% of war crimes or violations against Palestinians without indictment

Despite the documentation of war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip over the past months, Tel Aviv maintains a pattern of impunity, resulting in 88% of these crimes and violations being closed without indictment.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, nearly nine out of ten Israeli military investigations into allegations of war crimes or violations committed by its soldiers since the start of the war in Gaza have been closed without finding any wrongdoing or left unresolved.

Action on Armed Violence reported that unsolved investigations include the killing of at least 112 Palestinians queuing for flour in Gaza City in February 2024, and an airstrike that killed 45 people in a massive fire at a camp in Rafah in May 2024.

The investigation into the killing of 31 Palestinians on their way to collect food from a distribution point in Rafah on June 1 is also unresolved.

Ian Overton and Lucas Tsantzouris of the AOAV team said the statistics suggest that Israel seeks to create a “pattern of impunity” by failing to reach conclusions or establish the absence of fault in the vast majority of cases involving “the most severe or public allegations of wrongdoing by its forces.”

AOVA reported that it found reports of 52 cases in English-language media outlets in which the Israeli military said it had conducted or would conduct an investigation into allegations of civilian harm or wrongdoing by its forces in Gaza or the West Bank between October 2023 and the end of June 2025. These cases involve the killing of 1,303 Palestinians and the injury of 1,880 others.

AOVA reported that 46 cases, representing 88% of the total, were closed without any evidence of wrongdoing. Another 39 cases are still under review or have not yet been reported, including four fatal incidents over the past month in which Palestinians were killed near or at food distribution points in the Gaza Strip.

Critics of this system, such as the human rights organization Yesh Din, say that FFA investigations can take years and have led to only one known trial out of 664 investigations related to previous IDF military operations in Gaza, in 2014, 2018-2019, and 2021.