The Israeli army recognizes that the journalist was probably killed by a soldier, but dismisses any legal proceedings.
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The Israeli army admitted, on Monday, September 5, that journalist Shireen Abu Akleh had, “according to a high probability”, was killed by one of his soldiers, during a raid led in May, in the North of the West Bank. However, she claims that this soldier “did not seek to target a journalist”. The man would have “poorly identified his target and he is sorry (…). It should not have happened, he did not deliberately do this,” said a senior military official.
The military prosecutor accepted the conclusions of this internal investigation. He will not ask the military police to open a criminal investigation, a procedure yet common after the death of a civilian during an operation.
Vive communication battle
At 51 years old, M Me Abu Akleh was a star of the Qatari chain al-Jazira, broadcast in all Arab people. Since the second Intifada (2000-2005), its appearances on the screen have punctuated the daily life of the Palestinians. His funeral in Jerusalem had gathered a crowd of unprecedented size for two decades. Israeli police had then aroused global indignation, hitting the bearers of his coffin. She intended to prevent them from carrying her body through the Arab districts of East Jerusalem.
The raid that M me Abu Akleh covered to Jenine followed a series of terrorist attacks carried out by isolated Palestinians in Israeli cities, who left 18 dead. This year, 80 Palestinians were killed by the army in the West Bank – activists, for many of them, and civilians. The death of M me Abu Akleh, because of his profession and his popularity, had drawn unpublished attention.
From the first hours, the Israeli authorities engaged in a lively communication battle, saying that it had probably been killed by a Palestinian shot – a possibility that they still do not exclude. Several press inquets have concluded, however, that the journalist had been shot by a shot from a convoy of Israeli military vehicles.
Journalists present by his side said that no activist was then near them. They had stayed in a relatively open place for a long time and believed that they had been identified by the soldiers. All wore helmets and bulletproof vests marked with the word “press”. The army is content to indicate that a soldier has been able to identify its target, having only a limited angle of view aboard a armored vehicle. She denies that a Palestinian, who came to help M Me Abu Akleh, was in turn targeted, as videos shown on site seem to show. She does not provide evidence to support her investigation.
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