Shireen Abu Akleh was doing his job on Wednesday, May 11. The journalist of the Qatari channel Al-Jazira had come as close as possible to the facts cover an Israeli foray into the city of Jénine, in the occupied West Bank, when she was killed in the head. She wore at the time of the drama a bulletproof vest struck with the word “press” and a helmet.
Witnesses, colleagues from the journalist, one of whom was also injured, immediately questioned the shots of Israeli soldiers. The Israeli authorities initially cleared the military in operation, recalling that they tracked up activists from Hamas, while Israel faces a wave of deadly attacks perpetrated on its territory. On the contrary, they mentioned the responsibility of Palestinian militiamen. At the end of the day, the Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, was much less affirmative.
If one thing is due to Shireen Abu Akleh, it is the truth. Due to the asymmetry of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which places face to face, in the West Bank, an overpowered occupation force, a sclerotic Palestinian authority and activists of a residual armed struggle, while the Palestinian population is deprived of Recourse and poorly represented, the two parties involved are less than ever able to cooperate. The reputation of Shireen Abu Akleh, face of the news of this tormented region on the Panarabic news channel for two decades, in fact also a symbol that further complicates this essential quest.
Only an independent, international investigation will be able to achieve this and prevent for once a Palestinian death in addition, becomes the subject of foulipbenign manipulations, as recent history has witnessed it. If it has nothing to blame itself, the Israeli army should also welcome it with serenity.
feeling of impunity
It is however permissible to doubt that it is so because decades of occupation have produced their corrosive effects on the ethics of Israeli military, who have long operated in the Palestinian territories with a feeling of impunity. The same day of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, an 18-year-old teenager, Thaer Khalil al-Yazouri, was also killed near Ramallah following clashes with Israeli soldiers. An illustration of more the trivialization of lethal shots, which no one has really moved abroad.
Such an investigation is all the more difficult since Israel systematically refuses external looks and everything that can be assimilated to a form of international justice, decried preventively because deemed biased by nature against the Jewish State. The countries which reacted to the death of Shireen Abu Akleh by asking for “transparency”, starting with the United States, should go beyond the laconic press releases to weigh in favor of this quest for truth, and assume what it involves.
To claim to defend the freedom to inform around the world, as Washington does, is indeed at this price. This freedom is essential in the Palestinian territories controlled by Israel, which attacked non -governmental organizations qualified as terrorist organizations a few months ago, in an unprecedented offensive against Palestinian civil society and its international donors. It is all the more imperative that the Palestinian authority does not hesitate to manhandle those who dispute it. The memory of Shireen Abu Akleh the demand.