American woman shot dead by Israeli troops at protest identified

PHOTO CAPTION: Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, Seattle, Washington, June 8, 2024. International Solidarity Movement/Handout via REUTERS

By Ali Sawafta

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) -Israeli troops shot and killed a Turkish-American woman who had been taking part in a protest against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday, Palestinian and Turkish officials said.

The White House said it was deeply disturbed by the death of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi and called on Israel to investigate. Turkey's foreign ministry said she was shot in the head, and blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government for her death.

Palestinian officials described her as a 26-year-old activist from Seattle who held U.S. and Turkish citizenship.

Eygi had recently graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle, the school's president, Ana Mari Cauce, said in a statement describing the news of her death as "awful" and saying Eygi had a "positive influence" on other students.

She studied psychology and Middle Eastern languages and cultures at the university, her family said in a statement late on Friday that was shared by the pro-Palestinian organization Institute of Middle East Understanding.

Israel's military said its troops had fired toward a male "main instigator" who posed a threat by hurling rocks at soldiers.

The military was looking into reports that a female foreign national "was killed as a result of shots fired in the area. The details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are under review."

There was no immediate comment on the incident from Netanyahu's office.

Fouad Nafaa, head of Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, told Reuters that Eygi had arrived there in critical condition with a serious head injury.

"We tried to perform a resuscitation operation on her, but unfortunately she died," he said.

The Palestinian Authority's official news agency, WAFA, said the incident occurred during a regular protest march by activists in Beita, a village near Nablus that has seen repeated attacks on Palestinians by Jewish settlers.

Eygi's family described her as a "fiercely passionate human rights activist" who had recently participated in college campus protests against U.S. support for Israel's war in Gaza. The statement called on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to pursue an independent U.S. probe into her killing.

"I begged her not to go (to the West Bank), but she had this deep conviction that she wanted to participate in the tradition of bearing witness to the oppression of people and their dignified resilience," Aria Fani, an assistant professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures at the University of Washington, told the Guardian.

The university president said, "Aysenur was a peer mentor in psychology who helped welcome new students to the department and provided a positive influence in their lives."

'DEEPLY DISTURBED'

White House's National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said Washington was "deeply disturbed by the tragic death of an American citizen" in the West Bank on Friday.

"We have reached out to the Government of Israel to ask for more information and request an investigation into the incident," Savett said in a statement.

U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen said Eygi was the third American killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants' attack on Israel sparked the war in Gaza and a resurgence of West Bank violence.

The "Biden Administration has not been doing enough to pursue justice and accountability on their behalf", said Van Hollen, a Democrat like Biden and Harris, who sits on the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. "If the Netanyahu Government will not pursue justice for Americans, the U.S. Department of Justice must."

Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan condemned Eygi's death, saying in a post on social media that Turkey "will continue to work in every platform to halt Israel's policy of occupation and genocide". Israel denies its actions in occupied Palestinian territories amount to genocide.

In a separate incident on Friday near Beita, in the village of Qaryut, a 13-year-old girl was killed by Israeli gunfire, Palestinian health officials said, after settlers attacked the village.

WAFA quoted the girl's father as saying she was in their home when it was hit by gunfire. The Israeli military said it was investigating after its troops had fired in the air to disperse what it described as violent confrontations between dozens of settlers and Palestinians in the area.

A rise in violent attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank has stirred anger among Western allies of Israel, including the United States, which has imposed sanctions on some Israelis involved in the settler movement.

Several weeks ago around 100 settlers attacked the village of Jit in the northern West Bank, drawing worldwide condemnation and an Israeli government promise of swift action against anyone found guilty of violence.

Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Palestinians want as the core of an independent state. Israel has built settlements there that most countries deem illegal, which Israel disputes citing historical and biblical ties to the land.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara and Humeyra Pamuk, Steve Holland and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Additional reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh; Writing by James Mackenzie and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Alison Williams, Timothy Heritage, Mark Heinrich, Diane Craft and William Mallard)