BBC Confirms Israeli Military Conducted Hundreds of Investigations into Killings Without Public Results
BBC Verify has identified 254 incidents over the past three years. The Israeli army said it is reviewing them after being accused of causing harm.
By Marilyn Thomas, BBC reporter and Maryam Ahmed
BBC Verify has identified 254 incidents in which the Israeli military is accused of killing or injuring people in Gaza, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and Israel, which it said it was investigating, but with no public findings.
Using targeted AI tools, BBC Verify examined more than 60,000 news reports and investigated hundreds of incidents in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) faced allegations of harm since the start of the Gaza war. After an extensive manual review of each incident, we found 300 that the army said it was investigating, of which only 28 were published on the IDF website. For the remaining 18 cases, it is not clear whether the investigation has been completed or not.
BBC Verify made several inquiries to the IDF about each case, but only received information about two incidents, which the IDF said were still under investigation. "The IDF takes seriously any allegations or reports of conduct that may be in violation of Israeli law or directives," the statement said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which works in war zones to uphold the Geneva Conventions, publishes guidelines that investigations into possible violations of international humanitarian law, whether criminal or otherwise, should be as transparent as possible.
Of the 254 incidents identified by BBC Verify, 158 occurred in Gaza, 48 in the West Bank and 32 in Lebanon. 16 others were in Israel or in the custody of the Israeli army. All of these incidents occurred between October 7, 2023, and August 19, 2026, and at least one person was killed in more than 200 of them.
Some events without public consequences date back to the end of 2023. One of the deadliest involved an attack on a school building in Gaza in August 2024, which reportedly killed at least 93 people, including six women and 11 children.
For three years, the IDF has often responded to allegations of harm by saying that an incident is under investigation in some form, such as "investigating", "reviewing", "investigating" or "investigating". Often, this is the last heard of a case.
A number of incidents have been escalated for criminal investigation by the IDF. Two cases that came under intense public scrutiny involved the murders of five-year-old Hind Rajab and 15 Palestinian Red Crescent emergency workers who were shot more than 100 times and allegedly at close range.
The results of IDF military investigations are not routinely made public, including those that lead to criminal investigations of IDF soldiers.
A number of those published are related to hostages in Gaza who are said to have been killed as a result of Israeli operations. In some cases, the military has only announced that it is investigating an incident of abuse of media organizations after being contacted by BBC Verify.
In August, the Israeli military released a rare report detailing an internal investigation into five incidents in Gaza, including the killings of Hind Rajab and 15 Palestinian emergency workers, which it revealed had turned into a criminal investigation.
In three other cases, which included the killing of seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) in an airstrike and the killing of four aid workers from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in two separate attacks in Gaza, the Israeli military said it had found no basis for or reasonable suspicion to open a criminal investigation.
The report also said that the Israel General Staff's Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism (FFAM), which conducts the IDF's investigations into foreign "exceptional operational incidents," has completed reviews of about 150 cases since the start of the war.
According to this report, these cases have now been transferred to the military prosecutor's office of the Israeli army for investigation. The IDF did not elaborate on the 150 incidents and did not specify whether the 150 incidents were separate from those identified by BBC Verify.
Despite numerous requests, the IDF has not provided a clear report on the status of the 300 investigations identified by BBC Verify.
The IDF said in a statement: "It releases information related to the results of investigations and reviews whenever possible, subject to legal and operational considerations, as well as limitations related to privacy and ... information security."
The organization added that some incidents are investigated through operational investigations at the command level "in order to determine the sequence of events, identify failures and learn lessons in order to improve operational behavior and adopt any necessary command measures".
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The IDF also said that during the war it had taken disciplinary action in dozens of cases against soldiers who failed to meet the standards expected of them and who acted contrary to IDF directives, including dismissal from combat positions and from reserve service.
Freedom of Information data obtained by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, shows that between October 2023 and August 2024 at least 1,456 Gaza-related incidents were referred to FFAM. Twelve of these investigations were completed and referred to the Military Attorney General's Corps (MAG), two of which resulted in criminal investigations.
Yesh Din researcher Dan Owen, who has been monitoring the military investigation since 2006, told BBC Verify that he believed the IDF often tried to "lengthen" investigations. "They try to spread these processes to the point where people forget and people don't care about them," he said.
Janina Dale, a professor of international law at Oxford University, said that under the Geneva Conventions, a party to an armed conflict is responsible for "its own investigation and potential trial."
"This bottom line is clear," he added. There are also guidelines for investigations approved by the ICRC, so they have some authority.
Eran Shamir Bohrer, director of the Center for Security and Democracy at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) and a former top lawyer for the Israeli military, said there are "real challenges" to investigating allegations in conflicts in which Israel is involved, given the complex combat environments.
"[In] a land that's hostile, that's not always under your control, gathering evidence can be very challenging. There's a lot of forces on the ground, a lot of them firing," he said.
Shamir Bohrer added: The idea of investigating soldiers in war conditions is never a common thing, which according to him is also seen in other law-abiding countries.
He added that Israel would only benefit from more transparency about its investigations, and he encouraged the IDF to "be more prepared to share with the public the information they make about the progress they make in investigating various allegations."
Since Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed and another 251 hostages were taken, the Israeli military has carried out extensive military operations in Gaza aimed at returning the hostages and dismantling Hamas.
According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, since the beginning of the war, more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks.
BBC Verify has reported on the deaths of emergency workers and people trying to access aid inside Gaza, the leveling of thousands of buildings in the Gaza Strip and incidents of alleged misconduct by Israeli soldiers over the past three years.
Just two months into the war, two women were killed in the land's only Catholic church in December 2023 by Israeli soldiers in an incident the IDF later said was under investigation.
According to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, a mother named Nahida Anton and her daughter Samer Anton were killed by sniper fire inside the compound of the Holy Family Church in Gaza.
BBC Verify contacted the IDF about the report at the time. The army said that the initial investigation indicated that the military forces had operated against the Hamas threat that they had identified "in the area of the church". The Israeli army added that it is "fully investigating the incident".
In September 2025, BBC Verify asked for an update on the investigation and was told that the incident was "still being investigated by FFAM".
Now, almost three years after Nahida and Samar were killed, the Israeli military has again said that the incident is under investigation.
Following the latest request for information, the IDF said: "Complex incidents may require significant time to gather, cross-check and verify relevant factual information."