A thousand days of Israeli impunity, still no justice for Shireen Abu Akleh

Veteran Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was killed 1,000 days ago while covering an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on May 11, 2022.

She was wearing a helmet and a clearly marked press vest when she was killed in what the Al Jazeera Media Network condemned as a “cold-blooded assassination”.

News agencies, rights groups and the United Nations have all conducted investigations into her killing and concluded that Abu Akleh was killed – likely deliberately – by Israeli troops.

The killing of Shireen

A household name in the Arabic-speaking world, Abu Akleh was a Palestinian-American journalist who covered the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory for 25 years.

On the day she was killed, she was with several colleagues in a safe area away from clashes and crossfire, although there was an Israeli army convoy about 200 metres (660 feet) away.

The shooting was caught on video and showed Abu Akleh falling to the ground, motionless. Her colleagues who tried to come to her aid were shot at.

Her death shocked the world and focused an international spotlight on Israeli killings of Palestinian journalists.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Israel has failed to hold any of its soldiers accountable for the killing of 20 Palestinian journalists during the 22 years before Abu Akleh’s death.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023, CPJ found that Israel has killed 159 Palestinian journalists.

Despite mounting evidence that Abu Akleh was directly targeted, there has been little political will to carry out a criminal investigation in Israel, the United States or in international courts.

Here’s all you need to know about the quest for justice for Abu Akleh.

What did Israel say?

Israel initially tried to deflect blame for the incident and suggested that Palestinian fighters killed the journalist.

However, it eventually walked that claim back and acknowledged its troops were responsible for her death, saying it was “an accident”.

One week later, Israel’s military said that it would not investigate the incident out of fear that treating its soldiers as suspects would lead to controversy within Israeli society, according to Israeli news reports.

A year later, Israel’s army spokesman Daniel Hagari said the army was “deeply sorry” for the death of Abu Akleh, reiterating that there was no intention to launch criminal proceedings against the soldiers believed to be behind the killing.

The United States dropped its request for an Israeli criminal investigation after Israel’s apology.

What did the US say?

It has been inconsistent, to say the least

Immediately after Abu Akleh’s death, the administration of then-US President Joe Biden said the perpetrators should be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”.

It changed its tune after Israel admitted its soldiers killed Abu Akleh and dismissed calls for a criminal investigation, claiming the shooting was an “accident” – and it dropped demands for Israel to investigate the perpetrators in September 2022.

Two months later, the US Federal Bureau for Investigation (FBI) opened a probe?that was welcomed by rights groups and Arab civil society in the US, but Israel has reportedly not cooperated with the investigation.

Did the US investigate?

The Palestinian Authority (PA), a governing body with limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank, handed over the bullet that killed Abu Akleh to US forensic experts.

The PA said it did not want Israel involved in the analysis out of fear that Israeli authorities would do anything to shield their troops from accountability.

At the time, Israel was still claiming that perhaps Palestinian armed groups had accidentally killed Abu Akleh.

But two days after receiving the bullet, then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the analysis was “inconclusive” because the bullet was badly damaged.

Who else published investigations?

Several mainstream news organisations and open-source investigation teams conducted probes of their own.

In May 2022, CNN said it acquired new evidence – two videos – suggesting that Abu Aqleh was shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces.

A joint investigation was also undertaken by the Palestinian legal rights group Al-Haq and Forensic Architecture, a United Kingdom-based group that specialises in open-source analysis and architecture techniques.

Their findings were released in September 2022 and determined that Abu Akleh was killed deliberately.

In addition, Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines documentary, The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, was released in December 2022 and cast doubt on Israel’s initial claims that she was killed by Palestinian gunfire or by crossfire.

Did the ICC do anything?

In December 2022, Al Jazeera Media Network filed a request for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open a case against Israel for the killing of Abu Akleh.

Abu Akleh’s family had filed a similar request to the court in September of that year, supported by the Palestinian press syndicate.

The ICC still has not disclosed whether or not it will open a case to pursue justice for Abu Akleh.

What about the UN?

On October 16, 2023, a United Nations International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that Israeli forces used “lethal force without justification” in targeting Abu Akleh.

It also said there were reasonable grounds that the Duvdevan Unit of the Israeli security forces had done it.

The commission based its findings on eight witness testimonies and a review of the open-source information as well as investigations carried out by news outlets including Al Jazeera, CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Al Jazeera called for the findings to be given to the ICC to help with its criminal investigation into the incident.