Statement on the Israeli military’s decision to deny a criminal investigation into MSF killings and injuries
Palestine · Statement
The Israeli Military Advocate General has closed, without opening a criminal investigation, the two cases MSF submitted for review: the November 2023 attacks on an MSF convoy in Gaza City, and the February 2024 strike on an MSF shelter in Khan Younis.
19 August 2026
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) strongly condemns the decision by the Israeli Military Advocate General (MAG) to close, without opening a criminal investigation, the cases MSF itself submitted for review: the multiple attacks on an MSF convoy in Gaza City in November 2023 that killed two, and the February 2024 strike on an MSF shelter in Khan Younis that killed two and injured six.
Unfortunately, this does not come as a surprise. These responses come nearly two years after MSF’s request was submitted, which was followed by a submission to the Israeli High Court of Justice challenging the MAG’s failure to provide any answer to our formal requests.
This is not justice. Two years of silence, followed by closures that raise more questions than they answer, is unacceptable. However, it is the predictable output of a military apparatus investigating itself: a system which has demonstrated itself unwilling to respond to the extent of violations that may amount to war crimes emerging from Gaza.
MSF staff and their family members are dead. Their names are known. Their locations were shared. Their vehicles were identified. We have always maintained that all elements point to a clear responsibility of the Israeli army for the deadly attacks. And yet, those responsible for their deaths have declined to pursue any criminal investigation.
With this decision, the MAG has made clear that there is no prospect of accountability within the Israeli legal system for the killing of our staff, just as there has been no accountability for Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians.
Killed in Gaza since October 2023
- 15MSF staff members killed by Israeli forces
- 1,700healthcare workers killed over the same period
Israeli forces continue to kill civilians with impunity, something these decisions by the MAG make clear.
The decision to ‘close’ these incidents must be understood in its proper context: in Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Healthcare facilities have been destroyed. Humanitarian convoys have been struck. Journalists, medical personnel, UN personnel, and aid workers have been killed in numbers unprecedented in any recent conflict.
MSF reaffirms what it has stated since the beginning of this violence: there is no military objective that justifies the wholesale sacrifice of civilians. And there is no internal military review that can substitute for genuine, independent, and impartial accountability.
We demand that the cases involving our colleagues be reviewed by an impartial investigative body.
To our colleagues we have lost, and to the countless civilians and humanitarian workers who have perished in Gaza: we will not let your deaths be filed away as procedural inevitabilities.
You deserved protection. You deserve justice.
MSF submitted both cases to the Israeli Military Advocate General for review: the multiple attacks on an MSF convoy in Gaza City in November 2023, which killed two people, and the February 2024 strike on an MSF shelter in Khan Younis, which killed two people and injured six. Nearly two years passed without an answer, after which MSF filed a submission to the Israeli High Court of Justice challenging the MAG’s failure to respond to its formal requests. Both cases have now been closed without a criminal investigation being opened.
