U.S. Assessment of Israeli Shooting of Journalist Divided American Officials

Middle East|U.S. Assessment of Israeli Shooting of Journalist Divided American Officials

After Shireen Abu Akleh, a celebrated Palestinian American journalist, was fatally shot in the West Bank in 2022, the State Department delivered an equivocal assessment.

While shots fired from Israeli military positions were “likely responsible,” it said, American officials “found no reason to believe that this was intentional.” The shooting, it said, was “the result of tragic circumstances.”

That statement outraged Palestinians and many others, who saw it as the latest instance of the Israeli military dodging accountability for Palestinian deaths. The United States never again publicly weighed in on Ms. Abu Akleh’s killing.

But the U.S. officials who closely examined the shooting were deeply divided over the Biden administration’s public conclusions, with some officials convinced that the shooting was intentional, according to five current and former U.S. officials who worked on the case.

There has been no conclusive evidence that the shooter knew he was targeting a journalist. Still, based on the circumstances of the shooting and the available evidence, these officials believed that the Israeli soldier must have been aware he was doing so. Other officials assigned to review the case, however, supported the U.S. government’s far more cautious assessment, the officials said.

One of those who opposed the Biden administration’s conclusion was Col. Steve Gabavics, a career military policeman with 30 years’ experience, including as the commandant of the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. At the time of the shooting, he was an official at the Office of the United States Security Coordinator. That office, which facilitates cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian security services, conducted the U.S. review of the shooting.