Opinion | There's no peace in Gaza without accountability | Guest Columns | captimes.com

I recently watched the haunting docudrama "The Voice of Hind Rajab." The film takes place in January 2024 inside a Palestinian Red Crescent emergency call center and uses recordings of Hind’s actual voice as the 5-year-old in Gaza pleads for help from a car in which she is surrounded by her dead relatives.

Hind's body was later found in the car, which was reportedly riddled with 335 bullets, believed to have been fired by Israeli forces. The ambulance sent to rescue her was destroyed, killing both paramedics.

Through Hind's conversations with dispatchers, we learn that the name of her school was The Happy Child, and in preschool she was in The Butterfly Class. Her mother recalls that Hind loved playing in the sand and ocean, and we see home video of her joyfully doing so.

Strikingly, during pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, activists occupied Hamilton Hall, renaming it "Hind's Hall" in her honor.

President Trump's inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace focused on Gaza. At the meeting, Trump emphasized that the parents who received the remains of the last Israeli hostage "wanted that dead body as much as if he were alive. ... There was great sadness, but there was great joy too."

Notably, in June 2024, the organization Save the Children estimated that over 20,000 Gazan children were missing — lost to their families, detained or buried beneath the rubble or in unmarked mass graves.

Trump also asserted that "the war in Gaza is over. ... What we're doing is very simple: Peace."

Yet the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem contends that since the "cease-fire" started on Oct. 10, 2025, the Israeli army has killed at least 609 people in Gaza, including at least 100 children.

Moreover, multiple United Nations agencies and humanitarian groups report that Israeli authorities have been blocking or severely restricting shelter supplies, including tents, tarps, timber, plywood and sandbags from entering Gaza.

As a result, heavy winter downpours have swamped the tents and temporary shelters of thousands of displaced Gazans.

Significantly, Israel has destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in Gaza since the start of the cease-fire. Furthermore, a Feb. 23 B'Tselem report concludes: "After Israel destroyed Gaza’s essential infrastructure, 39 local residents, including 22 minors, lost their lives due to severe weather in December and January."

These realities cast a harsh light on how "peace" is being defined.

Kaouther Ben Hania is the director of The Voice of Hind Rajab. At the Cinema for Peace gala in Berlin, Germany, on Feb. 16, Ben Hania noted that Hind's killing is not an exception, and she refused an award, insisting that "peace is not a perfume sprayed over violence so power can feel refined, and can feel comfortable. ... If we speak about peace, we must speak about justice. Justice means accountability."

As world leaders invoke peace in name, Hind’s story demands that we ask what peace without justice means. Ben Hania's words remind us that peace without accountability is not reconciliation — it is denial.