The tragic killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza on Monday poses a new crisis for Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he “deeply regrets” the incident involving chef Jose Andres’s nongovernmental aid organization. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has pledged that a credible investigation will be carried out and to also establish a joint IDF-aid NGO situation room.

Yet major questions must be asked of the Israeli intelligence and targeting cycle that precipitated this strike. The WCK says the Israel Defense Forces had been informed of its aid workers’ location. It says that those personnel had just unloaded aid into a warehouse and were then driving south in a three-car convoy along the Gazan coast. At least one of the WCK vehicles was clearly marked with WCK’s name and logo. These identifiers should have been easily visible to Israeli overhead surveillance platforms. While Hamas hides behind international aid organizations, even if the WCK vehicle identifiers were unclear, they should have triggered a safeguarding check by other Israeli surveillance platforms to ensure that the convoy was an enemy force. Why the convoy was nonetheless targeted thus requires answering. And while Netanyahu is right in saying that incidents like this “happen in wartime,” that rhetoric strikes the wrong tone.