“We are confident and certain of our investigations and the results we have reached,” Akram Al Khatib, the Palestinian attorney general, told WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, on Saturday, while specifying that the bullet had been handed over to a team of American ballistic specialists and not to the Israeli authorities.
Mr. Khatib has previously said that the journalist was killed by a 5.56 mm armor-piercing round with a steel component. Ms. Abu Akleh was wearing a helmet and a protective vest marked with the word “Press” when she was shot in the head.
A monthlong investigation by The New York Times found that the bullet that killed Ms. Abu Akleh was fired from the approximate location of an Israeli military convoy early that morning, most likely by a soldier from an elite unit, corroborating eyewitness reports from the scene.
Israeli military officials have said it would only be possible to unequivocally determine the source of the gunfire if the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited control over parts of the West Bank, handed over the bullet extracted from Ms. Abu Akleh’s body so that the army could either match it to a rifle used that morning by an Israeli sniper or rule out Israeli involvement in the killing.