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US dual citizen shot by Israeli forces in West Bank

An American woman has been killed in the occupied West Bank, the US State Department has said.

Two witnesses said the woman was shot in the head by Israeli forces who had opened fire.

The woman, Aysenur Eygi, a 26-year-old volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group, had been attending a protest of Jewish settlement expansion in the town of Beita when she was shot, her colleagues said. Copies of her passport that circulated online said she was born in Turkey, and the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement that she was a citizen.

The Israel Defence Forces said it was ‘‘looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area’’. The statement said that Israeli forces in the area of Beita, in the northern West Bank, ‘‘responded with fire towards a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them’’.

Jonathan Pollak, a volunteer with ISM, said the shooting took place about 30 minutes after protesters had dispersed, at a time when there were no active clashes taking place, and as foreign volunteers, including Eygi, stood observing at a distance of about 200 metres from the Israeli military.

‘‘There was no justification for taking that shot,’’ he said.

National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement that the United States was ‘‘deeply disturbed by the tragic death’’ of Eygi and had reached out to Israel ‘‘to ask for more information and request an investigation into the incident’’.

When Pollak and his colleagues arrived in Beita on Friday, soldiers were already deployed around a site where people were set to perform Friday prayers, he said. As soon as the prayers were over, clashes began, he said. The soldiers used tear gas and live ammunition ‘‘almost immediately’’. There was also ‘‘stone throwing’’ at the soldiers, he said.

The ISM activists retreated some distance away, down a hill, 200 metres from where the soldiers were stationed. ‘‘We stood there for about half an hour,’’ Pollack said. The soldiers took over a rooftop in the town, he said, calling it ‘‘a controlling rooftop’’.

Eygi was in an olive grove, according to Pollak and another ISM volunteer.

‘‘I didn’t see her at the moment of the shooting because I was looking at the soldiers,’’ Pollak said. ‘‘I saw the soldiers shooting. I saw the flare, I saw them aiming.’’

‘‘We were clearly visible to the army, there was nothing happening where were standing,’’ said another witness. ‘‘We were internationals.’’ She said that Palestinian youth who had clashed with the soldiers were much further away, up the hill.

Pollak said Eygi’s killing was not ‘‘an isolated incident. Seventeen people have been killed at demonstrations in Beita since 2021. The only reason we are hearing about it now is because it’s happening to an American. It’s devastating.’’

In the background of Friday’s protest is a sustained effort by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to expand Israel’s control over the West Bank, by approving land seizures and major settlement construction while escalating demolitions of Palestinian property and increasing state support for illegally built settler outposts.

The campaign has resulted in the most significant territorial changes in the West Bank in decades and buoyed a radical Jewish settler movement, backed by right-wing cabinet members trying to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state.

Article link: https://todayspaper.smedia.com.au/theage/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=AGE20240908&entity=Ar03102&sk=1FBC87B5&mode=text
Article source: The Age & Sydney Morning Herald / Washington Post | Kareem Fahim | 8 September 2024

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