Last month, the Israeli military announced the results of its preliminary reviews of five high-profile incidents that occurred during its campaign of mass killing and destruction in Gaza. The military had decided to open a criminal investigation into the January 2024 killing of Hind Rajab, six of her relatives, and two Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics; and another into the March 2025 killing of 15 medical and rescue workers in Tel Al-Sultan.
By contrast, in three other cases, the military concluded there was no basis for opening a criminal investigation: the killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers in April 2024, the attack on a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) convoy in November 2023, and the attack on an MSF building in February 2024.
This announcement might appear to signal a willingness on Israel’s part to investigate suspected crimes committed in Gaza. But an examination of Israel’s military law enforcement mechanism suggests something very different: Such announcements are far more likely to serve as a publicity stunt aimed at maintaining the appearance of accountability rather than delivering it. And by drawing attention to a handful of exceptional cases, the military directs attention away from the vast number of killings and suspected war crimes that have never been reviewed or investigated at all.
That publicity stunt matters because Israel has an obligation under international law to investigate suspected war crimes, and a failure to conduct genuine investigations may itself constitute a violation of international law. Indeed, Israel’s principal defense against international criminal proceedings is precisely that its domestic legal system is willing and able to address alleged violations.
Citing “Israel’s processes for review, examination, investigation, and proceedings under its national legal system” the state has invoked the principle of complementarity to argue that the International Criminal Court (ICC) should not interfere. In other words, the existence of a seemingly functioning investigative system helps shield Israel and its officials from international prosecution.
Delay, deflect, dismiss
The latest decisions were based on reviews conducted by the General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism (FFAM), an internal military body established in 2014 amid global criticism of Israel’s handling of suspected violations of international law. The mechanism was intended, in part, to bring Israel’s investigative system into compliance with international legal standards.
The FFAM conducts preliminary assessments of incidents that raise suspicions of war crimes and advises the Military Advocate General (MAG) on whether to open a criminal investigation. Most cases that the military determines might involve suspected war crimes by Israeli forces in Gaza are referred to the FFAM, making it the military’s primary mechanism for reviewing such allegations.
The FFAM, however, does not itself conduct criminal investigations, a task that falls to the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of the military police. The fact that the FFAM only concerns itself with the preliminary assessments creates an additional stage between an alleged offense and the possibility of investigating it — a period during which evidence can be lost, memories fade, and witnesses can become harder to locate.
Monitoring of this mechanism by Yesh Din, the human rights organization where I work, over nearly a decade before October 2023 reveals a record of extraordinary delays and almost nonexistent accountability. Of 664 Gaza-related incidents referred to the FFAM, only 41 (6 percent) led to criminal investigations. Just one ultimately resulted in a conviction: A tank commander who authorized the shooting of farmer Hasan Sami Al-Borno in Gaza in 2021 was sentenced to just 30 days of “military work,” the equivalent of community service.
According to the military, FFAM reviews are intended to provide a rapid initial assessment; the military’s own guidelines set an initial timeframe of 30 days. Yet the outcomes in the five cases announced in August came between roughly a year and a half and nearly three years after the incidents themselves.
And although the military’s recent decision to open two criminal investigations has generated significant public attention, this marks only the beginning of another process — one whose prospects may already have been damaged by the delay. Even assuming a genuine willingness to investigate, by the time criminal investigators begin their work, evidence may have been lost and some of the soldiers involved may already be traveling through India on the post-army “hummus trail.”
These delays are indicative of how the Israeli military legal system operates, and they work to Israel’s advantage. Incidents can remain “under review” for years, allowing the military to deflect demands for criminal investigations while public scrutiny subsides and the prospects of an effective investigation steadily diminish — all while Israel can continue to claim that suspected war crimes are being examined in an attempt to prevent international legal action.
The handling of the military’s actions during the current assault on Gaza follows this same pattern, only on a far greater scale. Between October 2023 and the end of July 2024, at least 1,456 Gaza-related incidents were referred to the FFAM. By August 2026, the military said the mechanism had completed and transferred assessments of only around 150 of them to the MAG — roughly 10 percent. And only four incidents in total (including the two recently announced) are known to have been referred by the MAG to the CID for criminal investigation following an FFAM assessment.
Some incidents, such as looting or the abuse and killing of detainees, inherently raise suspicions of war crimes and are therefore more likely to be referred directly for criminal investigation, without prior FFAM review.. Based on publicly available information, the CID has opened at least an additional 72 criminal investigations connected to Israel’s assault on Gaza since October 2023 into cases that were not first reviewed by the FFAM — still a strikingly low number considering how many incidents over the past three years could reasonably raise suspicions of war crimes.
Yet, as the military’s past record makes clear, opening a criminal investigation does not in itself guarantee accountability. Only two of the aforementioned investigations have so far resulted in convictions for offenses committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians: one for the abuse of Palestinian detainees at the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility, and another for looting in Gaza. This is despite the deaths of nearly 100 detainees in Israeli custody between October 2023 and November 2025, and widespread reports of looting by Israeli soldiers, none of which have resulted in convictions.
Even the single looting conviction appears to have come about largely because the soldier tried to deposit the stolen money in a bank, where it was discovered to be counterfeit — leaving the military with little choice but to prosecute.
Put simply, nearly three years after Israel launched one of the most destructive military offensives of the 21st century — an assault that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians through Israel’s unrestrained use of force and generated countless allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide — Israel is publicly known to have convicted just two soldiers for harming Palestinians.
A smokescreen for mass killing
Despite Israel’s efforts to present these rare cases as evidence that its accountability mechanisms work, the military investigative system has functioned primarily to whitewash suspected violations. Past experience shows that criminal investigations into harm to Palestinians are rarely opened and, and even when they are, almost never result in prosecution.
Even the handful of cases that do advance can buckle under political pressure. In March 2026, following intense backlash in Israel, the MAG withdrew the indictment against five Force 100 reservists accused of aggravated abuse of a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman. In an ironic twist, the episode exposed a tension within Israel’s legal strategy: Intense domestic pressure to protect soldiers from prosecution can undermine the very proceedings Israel relies on to argue that international prosecution is unnecessary.
The purpose of Israel’s military law enforcement system is not simply to decide if an individual soldier broke the law, but rather to place a veneer of legality over the mass killing and destruction in Gaza. It performs this function by turning suspected crimes into prolonged reviews, investigations into dead ends, and accountability into an empty word.
There is also a conflict of interest at the heart of the system. The FFAM is not designed only to examine suspected war crimes, but is also used to draw what the army calls “operational lessons” to improve how it plans and conducts military operations. And when it is not opening (or closing) criminal investigations, the MAG serves as a legal advisor to approve Israel’s killing sprees in Gaza.
Most read on +972
In other words, the branch of the state that authorizes and enables the use of force is the same one that reviews a small number of its horrific consequences. Moreover, its narrow fixation on what the military calls “exceptional incidents” further obscures the responsibility of the senior political and military officials who formulated and authorized the killing doctrine in Gaza — including officials wanted by the ICC.
The latest decisions serve as a reminder of the system’s true role: to isolate a handful of incidents for legal scrutiny while leaving the larger machinery of mass killing beyond investigation, providing legal cover for Israel’s murderous actions and a public smokescreen that shields the state and its officials from accountability.
