Israeli Army Kills American Activist In Occupied West Bank

Above photo: Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead by an Israeli army solider during a protest in the occupied West Bank. ISM.

26-year-old Aysenur Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli forces while attending a West Bank protest on Friday.

An American woman was shot and killed by Israeli forces during a protest in Beita near Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank on Friday.

On Friday morning the State Department confirmed that Aysenur Eygi, a 26-year-old American citizen born in Turkey, had died. Two Palestinian doctors told the AP that Eygi had been shot in the head and died after arriving at the local hospital.

“We tried to save the American citizen, we tried to revive the heart for several stages, but unfortunately, we did not succeed in restoring the heart to function,” said Rafidia Hospital director Dr. Fouad Naffa.

“We are deeply disturbed by the tragic death of an American citizen, Aysenur Egzi Eygi, today in the West Bank and our hearts go out to her family and loved ones,” said White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett in a statement. “We have reached out to the government of Israel to ask for more information and request an investigation into the incident.”

Eygi was a member of the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and was attending a protest against West Bank settlement expansion when she was shot.

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli activist who also participated in the protest, said the killing occurred shortly after Israeli soldiers encircled a communal prayer. Clashes broke out as a result of the move, but protesters attempted to retreat after they subsided. According to Pollak, two soldiers perched on the roof of a nearby home shot at the activists while they were attempting to leave.

Pollak says he then saw Eygi “lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death.”

Foreign activists recount the moment when Israeli occupation forces shot and killed 26-year-old American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi during a settlement demonstration near Nablus in the northern West Bank today. pic.twitter.com/7NA5HMtU9j

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) September 6, 2024

“We were peacefully demonstrating alongside Palestinians against the colonisation of their land and the illegal settlement of Evyatar,” said another ISM volunteer in a statement. “The situation escalated when the Israeli army began to fire tear gas and live ammunition, forcing us to retreat. We were standing on the road, about 200 meters from the soldiers, with a sniper clearly visible on the roof. Our fellow volunteer was standing a bit further back, near an olive tree with some other activists. Despite this, the army intentionally shot her in the head.”

“This is just another example of the decades of impunity granted to the Israeli government and army, bolstered by the support of the US and European governments, who are complicit in enabling genocide in Gaza,” she continued. “Palestinians have suffered far too long under the weight of colonization. We will continue to stand in solidarity and honor the martyrs until Palestine is free.”

The Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned the killing on Twitter, calling it a “murder carried out by the Netanyahu government.”

Regarding the Killing of a Turkish Citizen in the West Bank by the Israeli Occupation Forces https://t.co/DxNnJiDIR9 pic.twitter.com/B7JeD2WnqK

— Turkish MFA (@MFATurkiye) September 6, 2024

In response to the news Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) tweeted, “Do something to save lives!” at Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Three ISM activists have been killed since 2000, including American Rachel Corrie who was crushed by an Israeli army soldier driving a bulldozer in 2003.

Beita: Years Of Struggle Against Settlement Expansion

The village of Beita, south of Nablus, has been the scene of a civil resistance movement since 2021, when Israel began the building of the ‘Evyatar’ settler outpost on Mount Sabih, on private lands belonging mostly to Palestinians from Beita, and also from the neighboring villages of Yitma and Qabalan.

Beita became a symbol of civil resistance, with most of the community participating in daily protests that culminated on Fridays, opening with Friday prayers at the closest location to Mount Sabih and evolving into confrontations with Israeli forces. Since 2021, at least 14 Palestinians have been killed in Beita’s protests by Israeli forces, and hundreds have been injured or wounded.

In July 2021, Israel decided to evacuate the settlers from Mount Sabih after reaching an agreement with them that allowed them to maintain a religious school in the location. In the meantime, Palestinian landowners and farmers were still prevented from accessing their land on the hilltop. Israeli settlers organized mass marches on Mount Sabih throughout 2022, demanding to be allowed to resettle the outpost. The marches were often headed byIsraeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who used Evyatar as a rallying symbol of the far-right settler movement in the West Bank.

In July 2024, the Israeli army officially confiscated 35 dunams of Beita’s land on Mount Sabih, including the Evyatar outpost as a ‘military area’, reigniting mass protests in the village, which continued to attract more international activists.

“Protests had begun to become limited to Friday prayers before October 7, but after the official confiscation last July, we understood that this is not an issue of settlers alone, but part of a larger political plan by the Israeli government to annex all of the West Bank,” Mahmoud Barham, an activist in Beita told Mondoweiss.

“Since the beginning of the protests three years ago, the [Israeli] occupation has revoked all working permits in Israel of men in Beita, and they are in the thousands, cutting a main part of their families’ livelihood, and those permits continued to be revoked for the majority,” said Barham. “The occupation has imposed checkpoints at the entrances of Beita, and has doubled night raids and arrests, although there is no armed resistance here, only civil resistance,” he pointed out.

“All the lands confiscated are private, and settlers work jointly with the army to grab them, which is why the army has killed 14 people of our community in an attempt to suppress the protests. Aysenur has become today Beita’s 15th martyr since 2021,” he added.

“It was the first time that she came to Beita and I had the chance to talk to her briefly before the Friday prayer,” said Barham of Aysenur. “She was very polite and respectful, very aware of the settlement danger and the case of Beita, sympathetic to our cause from a humanist standpoint” Barham said.

“She stood beside us during the prayer in the protest location, and there were no confrontations,” he recalled. “Then, after the prayer, young men began to walk down the valley to protest, and the army fired the first two bullets. One hit a young man in the thigh, and the other hit Aysenur in the head,” he detailed.

The Israeli army was quoted by Israeli media saying that its soldiers opened fire at lower body parts of “rioters” after stones were thrown at them.