Palestine unites to mourn the death of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh | International

Shireen Abu Akleh has been capable of what only great figures can achieve: uniting the entire Palestinian people and exposing the Israeli occupation to the eyes of the world both in life and after death. The veteran Palestinian journalist for Al Jazeera, who was shot dead on Wednesday while covering an Israeli military incursion into the occupied West Bank, had become, after 25 years appearing on the televisions of millions of people, a journalistic reference in the Arab world. Her moving death, which the Qatari network and the Palestinian Authority blame on Israeli soldiers, has been greeted with one of the longest and most crowded funerals in Palestinian history.

Born in Jerusalem in 1971, Abu Akleh graduated in Journalism in Jordan and returned to Palestine to work. After passing through various media outlets, the reporter made the leap to Al Jazeera in 1997, just one year after the chain was founded, as she recalled. There she was one of the first correspondents of its service in Arabic, and began to forge her fame for her coverage of the second Intifada, in the year 2000. Abu Akleh also covered important events such as the successive wars launched by Israel in Gaza from 2008 to last year, and in Lebanon in 2006. Her colleagues have remembered her as a brave, kind and approachable reporter.

One of the places where Abu Akleh had frequently worked was precisely Jenin, the city in the north of the occupied West Bank to which he traveled on Wednesday to follow an Israeli military incursion into a refugee camp. It was during that coverage, to which she went with a bulletproof vest, helmet and clearly identified as a reporter, that Abu Akleh was hit by a shot in the head that the reporters who accompanied her, Al Jazeera and the Palestinian Ministry of Health attributed to the Army Israeli. The latter initially denied her involvement and assured that they could have been Palestinian combatants, a statement that he later clarified with calls for an investigation.

Abu Akleh’s death immediately shocked much of the Arab world, and has caused great consternation and anger throughout Palestine. Proof of this is that the journalist has been honored in a long and solemn procession that has taken her over three days from Jenin to Jerusalem, passing through the city of Nablus, where her autopsy was performed, and Ramallah, where A state funeral was held on Thursday, attended by thousands of people, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

On the same Thursday, the body of Abu Akleh was transferred to Jerusalem, where a new procession was scheduled to take place on Friday from a hospital in the symbolic neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in occupied East Jerusalem, to the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin. in the Old City, where a funeral service was held before she was buried in a nearby cemetery. Thousands of people gathered again to accompany her.

The Israeli police, however, tried to prevent some Palestinians from hanging Abu Akleh posters outside the cathedral, and began to close the roads to the hospital from which the march was to start when people began to gather, according to Al Jazeera reported. Videos Postings on social media also showed how police had forcibly removed Palestinian flags from the reporter’s home on Thursday. And during Friday’s procession, Israeli riot police attacked the march, beating those holding Abu Akleh’s coffin, causing it to nearly fall to the ground at one point, seizing Palestinian flags and firing flash grenades. The images of the repression have generated even more indignation among those who followed the march in honor of the reporter throughout the Arab world.

The Israeli police claimed in a first statement who had intervened in response to the throwing of stones and other objects, a story that The videos diffused by the body itself do not seem to sustain. In a second statement, the police assured that they had acted to disperse the crowd, prevent them from loading the coffin and allow the funeral to proceed as agreed with the family of Abu Akleh, something that the reporter’s brother denied in statements to the network British BBC. Israel has a long history of cracking down on any display of Palestinian nationalism. This Saturday, the Israeli Minister of Public Security, Omer Bar-Lev, has ordered the opening of an investigation into the police action.

Late on Friday, when the procession had already ended, the Palestinian Prosecutor’s Office issued a statement in which it assured that its initial investigations indicate that the only source of fire at the time and place where Abu Akleh was shot was that of Israeli forces. He also pointed out that the first indications suggest that the crime was committed deliberately. His version agrees with that of the journalists who were with the reporter at the time.

Israel, for its part, has pointed out that it can only determine the author of the shots with a ballistic analysis and has requested that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh be handed over to it for a joint investigation with the Palestinian Authority. Ramallah, however, has rejected the request and has assured that it will carry out the investigation. Human rights groups have repeatedly denounced that Israel rarely conducts thorough investigations into the deaths of Palestinians shot by its soldiers. Since 2000, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists has documented 46 Palestinian journalists killed without anyone being held accountable.

Despite the risk involved in the profession in the region, a video much shared on social networks in recent days collects the testimony of Abu Akleh herself explaining why she decided to dedicate herself to it. “I chose journalism to be close to people,” she said. “It may not be easy to change reality, but at least you could bring your voice to the world. I am Shireen Abu Akleh.”

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