The short life of Imad Abu Zahrah

The two men heard the sound of Israeli armor moving through the city center. They no doubt remembered the events of June 21, when Israeli forces had fired on civilians in roughly the same area, killing three children and a middle-aged woman. The killings were a big story.

Dahleh carried a digital still camera and was on assignment for a Palestinian news agency.

It remains unclear whether Imad was equipped for work. Another Jenin photographer, Said Dahleh's brother, Saifuddin, says Imad wore a cloth vest marked with the words "TV" and "press," and Imad's family says he carried two cameras. But neither the vest nor the cameras have been recovered and none of the items appear in the video footage shot that day.

Said and Imad approached the area where the Israeli APC had hit the electricity pole. They stood some 50 yards away.

"The soldiers didn't say, 'Go away,' or 'Don't take pictures,'" says Said. Instead, they opened fire. "I escaped to another street. I looked back and saw Imad on the ground. I came back to take him, but they fired again."

Coincidentally, Said's father Shawki was also on the street. A trained nurse who runs a taxi stand, he says the gunfire prevented him from coming to Imad's aid: "I saw him dying and I couldn't help." He did manage to arrange for the taxi that evacuated the wounded men.

He and other Palestinians interviewed at the scene say the Israelis fired without warning.

They say a crowd did attack the Israeli vehicles – but with fruit and stones, not gunfire – and only after the shooting of Imad and Said.

Three days after Imad's death, two colleagues and I went back to Jenin to pay our respects to Abu Zahrah's father, Subhi. A former English teacher, he had warmly welcomed us into his home in April.

A few mourners sat on plastic chairs outside the house, under a green plastic tarpaulin. Some trees in the garden bore posters with Imad's picture. Inside, male visitors arrived to kiss Subhi's unshaven cheeks, shake his hand, and sit for few minutes as they sipped bitter Arabic coffee.

In the main room of the house, the dead man's mother received female mourners. "I'm very sad to have lost my son," she says. "But for his work, for his telling the world the truth, I am very glad. I thank God." Her face turned down, her hair hidden by a white scarf, she says he was her "special son."

In a disheveled, dusty bedroom, Imad's brother Mujib showed us coverage of Imad's death and funeral recorded from the Qatari satellite channel, Al Jazeera, and a local television station. Family members gathered as we watched. As the images of Imad getting into the taxi played across the screen of the small television, Imad's sister and other women began to weep.

The cadence of their grief rose during the scenes of Imad's body being brought home before the burial.

In a conflict where nearly every death is a symbol, the videotape shows that Imad's was no exception. Mourners carry the corpse on a stretcher, shrouded in a Palestinian flag, into the Abu Zahrah living room, where the women of the family crowd around it, crying and ululating.

His mother wraps Imad's head in a black-and-white keffiyeh, the emblem of Palestinian nationalism. Her face is rigid. She doesn't shed a tear.

His life has achieved new meaning: He is a martyr.

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