US investigates killing of Al-Jazeera journalist in West Bank
By Patrick Kingsley
JERUSALEM — The US Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American journalist, in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli Defence Ministry announced Monday (14) night.
Israel’s defence minister, Benny Gantz, confirmed that a US inquiry had begun and said that Israel would not participate, reducing the likelihood that a court case would result. Several investigations have concluded that Abu Akleh, who was shot in the head May 11, was probably killed by an Israeli soldier.
“The decision of the US Department of Justice to investigate the unfortunate death of Shireen Abu Akleh is a grave mistake,” Gantz wrote in a statement in Hebrew. The statement added, “We will not cooperate with any external investigation, and we will not allow interference in Israel’s internal affairs.”
The announcement came six months after Abu Akleh, a reporter for Al-Jazeera, was slain while covering an Israeli Army raid in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the West Bank. Her death drew global outrage and international attention to the dangers of life in the occupied West Bank.
The US move represented a shift in the Biden administration, which had concluded that Abu Akleh most likely was killed by shots fired from the position of Israeli soldiers, but had refused to publicly demand that Israel open a criminal investigation.
The shift followed Palestinian anger at perceived US resistance to a full investigation, as well as several independent inquiries into Abu Akleh’s killing. A month-long investigation by The New York Times found that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh had been fired from the approximate location of an Israeli military convoy earlier that morning, most likely by a soldier from an elite unit, corroborating witness reports from the site.
Other news organizations and the United Nations reached similar conclusions.
The US State Department said in July that shots fired from the position of Israeli soldiers were “likely responsible for the death” of Abu Akleh, but damage to the bullet made it difficult to draw a definitive conclusion about the gun from which it came. At that time, the United States also concluded that Abu Akleh had most likely been killed by accident — but the announcement Monday suggested that at least some US officials had drawn a different conclusion.
The Justice Department declined to comment Monday.
Abu Akleh, 51, was killed while covering a rise in Israeli raids in the West Bank, a surge that has continued and that followed an earlier rise in attacks by Palestinians that killed 19 Israelis. She was shot while wearing a blue flak jacket marked “Press,” and colleagues who came under fire at the same time said they had thought the army was already aware of their presence.
Israeli officials initially said that Abu Akleh had most likely been killed by a Palestinian gunman during clashes between Israeli soldiers and militants, before conceding in September that “there is a high possibility” that she was killed by an Israeli soldier, while ruling out a criminal investigation.
Abu Akleh was one of more than 120 Palestinians killed as of November this year during Israeli Army raids in the West Bank — most of them militants, but some of them civilians.
For Palestinians, her killing became a symbol of the daily dangers of life under Israeli occupation. Palestinian deaths rarely attract global attention, except during major episodes of violence, and Israeli soldiers accused of crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank are rarely jailed.
But Abu Akleh was a well-known figure in the Middle East, and her fatal shooting provoked more outcry. She had reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank for more than 20 years.
-New York Times
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