Thousands of mourners participated in the funeral procession for Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who before being killed by gunfire on Wednesday was one of the best-known Palestinian faces in the world.
The funeral was marred by violence as some mourners threw rocks at the hundreds of police officers who attempted to secure the procession’s route, and who responded with batons and stun grenades. At one instance, the coffin carrying Abu Akleh’s remains almost slipped and fell to the pavement amid the disorder and the jostling.
For the past twenty-five years, millions of viewers saw reports from the region on the most widely watched news channel in the Arab world accompanied by the iconic reporter’s calm delivery and the words “This is Shireen Abu Akleh, Palestine.”
In a statement, police said they attempted to coordinate a “dignified funeral” with Abu Akleh’s family.
“Unfortunately,” the statement said, “under cover of the funeral, and taking cynical advantage of it, hundreds of people began disrupting the public order before it even began. As the coffin was about to exit the hospital, stones began to be thrown at officers from the hospital’s plaza, and the officers were forced to use riot dispersal means.”
In a video posted online by Israel Police, officers are seen ripping Palestinian flags off of the hearse carrying her coffin.
Akleh was shot and killed in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin early Wednesday morning, as she covered a firefight between Israeli army soldiers and Palestinian militants. Al Jazeera and the Palestinian government claim she was “fatally shot by Israeli forces.” An autopsy undertaken by a Palestinian forensic institute said its examination proved “inconclusive.”
The Israeli army, which is also investigating the incident, has not had access to the bullet that killed her, and says its interim examination was also inconclusive.
While there are indications that behind the scenes, Israelis and Palestinian are in fact sharing information they have gathered since the fatal incident, officially they only agree on one thing: they don’t know whose killed her.
For many Palestinians, who shot the lethal bullet is a moot point. No one attending the funeral agreed to be named, but from their point of view, Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank is to blame for the journalist’s death, no matter who shot the bullet.
At her Jerusalem funeral, at least 1000 mourners rhythmically called out her name as they accompanied her casket towards Jaffa Gate, on its way to her final resting place next to her parents, in the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion.
Helicopters roared above and police dodged rocks thrown by mourners and used batons against participants in the final procession, which began at the French Hospital in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and wound its way, with Abu Akleh’s coffin carried aloft, to the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin, where Father Fadi Diab led the service.