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'This was so unnecessary'
Word of Shaden's shooting rippled through the neighborhood. "Like that," says her son Saed, snapping his fingers. Neighbors took him to one hospital and his parents to another. When he joined his father, who was kept in intensive care that night, he found the waiting room full. "All these people broke curfew and risked their lives to be with us."
The diplomat, who requested anonymity for this article, arrived at the Abu Hijleh house to find the wreckage of chipped stone, shattered glass and spilled blood. Neighbors told him what they'd seen. He examined the bullet holes and paced the area where the jeeps had stopped. There, in the fine, dusty gravel, he found a cluster of copper-colored bullet shells. Army officials would later identify them as M16 or Galil rifle ammunition, standard issue for Israeli soldiers.
"The bullet holes were tightly grouped, it doesn't look like a random shooting," says the diplomat. "It's not required by curfew laws [for people] to be inside and it's not legal to enforce curfew with live ammunition. This was so unnecessary."
In the next few hours, Qadri and the Hijlehs photographed Shaden's wounds to record the evidence. Then Qadri undertook a more common ritual associated with death in the territories, bringing Shaden's photograph to the printer to make a martyr poster.
The printer looked at the photo - Shaden smiling, wearing lipstick, her short brown hair uncovered - and refused. Martyrdom has always been a religious notion, even for the secular cause of a Palestinian state. Shaden, the printer said, should be shown wearing an Islamic veil. "That's not the woman we knew," countered Qadri. In the end, she prevailed.
After the funeral, Jamal gathered his children. Two other sons, both US citizens, had flown in from Dubai and the US. His daughter Lana, a civil engineer who works for the UN here, had rushed back from a conference in Jordan.
Jamal and Shaden had only recently applied for resident alien status to go stay with their son in the Chicago suburbs. Jamal's future was now uncertain, but he had something to say about his children's plans.
"He told us that our mother had given us the tools for a good life, that we should carry out her message [of nonviolent resistance]," Lana remembers. "So we decided not to let her become another number, because Palestinians have become faceless lately. She was known for the work she did. She has a name."
The family is using its affluence and influence. Jamal is a respected physician, Saed is a university professor, and his two brothers are engineers. The brothers who hold US citizenship wrote to the US consul general in Jerusalem with their mother's story. Israel receives about $8 million a day in US aid; its army uses American ammunition. In their letter, the brothers said they felt their tax dollars had helped kill their mother.
They say they received no response.
Forty days after Shaden's death - a day when Muslims traditionally commemorate the dead - the family hired a lawyer to take the army and Prime Minister Sharon to court, first in Israel and then to an international court, if possible.
"Many people don't have the tools we do," says Lana. "They might be frightened, they might say it's God's will. In our opinion it's not God's will that our mother is dead, it was some soldier's will and he should be punished."
A search for justice
The Abu Hijlehs' chances of seeing some accountability for Shaden's death are about fifty-fifty, say lawyers and human rights experts. If their case isn't investigated and prosecuted in an Israeli court, then theoretically they can approach the International Criminal Court, which has a mandate to try war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Hijlehs are considering international law at a time when Israel, along with the US, is distancing itself from world courts.
In 2002, survivors of a 1982 massacre at a Lebanese refugee camp went to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to bring war crimes charges against Sharon for his involvement. The case was dismissed.
But later that year, Britain's Scotland Yard began investigating war crimes allegations against Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz while he was visiting the country. Shortly after, Amnesty International accused Israel of war crimes during its spring siege of the West Bank.
Israel reacted swiftly. Its leaders do not want soldiers reluctant to act for fear of future war crimes charges. Officials ordered an assessment of the countries where Israeli politicians and soldiers could face arrest for war crimes.
Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a conference of countries opposed to the international court. And Israel "unsigned" the ICC mandate last year, signaling that it has no intention of submitting to its oversight.
Israeli officials acknowledge the irony of this situation, since much international humanitarian law was born from the ashes of the Holocaust.
"The concept that there are crimes the world should try was invented by us," says Colonel Reisner. But like many other officials, he says Israel has no choice but to protect itself. "Arab states are using the international court to target Israel."
Accidental martyr
Curled on her living room couch in a Gap sweatshirt and jeans, Lana abu Hijleh has a dark, heavy-lidded beauty and a dancer's build. The Jerusalem sky, visible through large half-moon windows, is a heavy gray. It has been six weeks and she misses her mother's regular 8 a.m. calls.
"She came from a conservative family, but she was liberal," Lana says. Shaden helped her become the first Nablus woman to study in the US and stood by her through a divorce, no small issue in a Muslim society. The greatest challenge, Lana finds, is coping with her anger. "I'm trying to direct it the right way," she says, "but it's so hard. People say 'You should be proud, she died a martyr.' " Lana shakes her head. "I couldn't relate. It wasn't her choice to die. It's dangerous, this glorification of death."
Her family is changing. Jamal and Saed fasted this Ramadan, for the first time, and commemorated Shaden's death with a reading of the Koran. Jamal prays regularly now and refers to Shaden as Al Marhouma, an honorific which means "God rest her soul." "That really upsets me," says Lana. "I want to tell him: She has a name, use it."
Lana worries about her father. A few weeks after Shaden's death, the invitation for an immigration interview arrived. "We told him he has to start a new life on his own," she says.
When she took Jamal to the US Consulate in East Jerusalem, the guard asked where Shaden was. When Lana said she had passed away, the guard picked up a marker, turned to a list of the day's visitors posted on the wall and drew a red line through Shaden's name. Jamal began to weep.
Last month the report on Shaden's death reached the chief of staff, reportedly outlining the stray bullet theory.
Ya'alon returned it, demanding more details.
On Jan. 6, almost three months after the killing, army investigators arrived at the Hijlehs' front door, prodded by the attention her case has received, the family believes. "They listened, they were polite," says Saed.
The IDF says its investigation will be finished within two weeks.
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TOM BROWN - STAFF
SOURCE: HA'ARETZ, MILITARY POLICE, JUDGE ADVOCATE-GENERAL'S OFFICE, B'TSELEM
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