POLICE ATTACK MOURNERS AT FUNERAL
In life, Shireen Abu Akleh, an acclaimed Palestinian American broadcaster, was one of the leading chroniclers of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.
Her death, while covering an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, turned her into one of the conflict’s most prominent recent victims. Palestinian witnesses and officials said Abu Akleh, 51, long a familiar face on the Al-Jazeera network, was shot by Israeli soldiers, although Israeli officials said she could have been struck by either Palestinian or Israeli fire.
Then, Friday in Jerusalem, her funeral was marred by another burst of violence. And as with her death, it was marked by clashing narratives.
Early Friday afternoon, as thousands of people massed in East Jerusalem, a phalanx of Israeli riot police assaulted a group of mourners carrying the coffin containing Abu Akleh’s body, causing them to almost drop it.
Israeli police later said they had intervened because the mourners, who wanted to carry the coffin by foot to the funeral, had refused to put it in a hearse, an arrangement that police said had previously been agreed to with Abu Akleh’s family.
But the police intervention drew shock and condemnation both in Israel and beyond, with the assault on mourners regarded as egregious regardless of its motive.
Tensions arose between Palestinians and Israeli police officers outside the hospital after the Palestinians began waving Palestinian flags and chanting nationalist slogans. They escalated after police refused to allow mourners to take the coffin on their shoulders to the church, according to Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, a senior foreign diplomat who witnessed the dispute.
That prompted a standoff between mourners, who would not allow the hearse to approach the hospital, and police, who refused to let them leave with the coffin, Kühn von Burgsdorff said.
Neither side would back down, as the mourners held onto the coffin and waved Palestinian flags against the demands of the police.
After warning the crowd to stop chanting, unsuccessfully, and after three plastic bottles were thrown in the direction of the police, the police abruptly surged toward the mourners, video showed.