NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli soldiers killed an American woman demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank on Friday, according to two witnesses who said what began as a peaceful demonstration devolved into a clash between stone-throwing protesters and troops firing live ammunition. Two Palestinian doctors said 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi of Seattle was shot in the head.
The U.S. government confirmed Eygi's death but did not say whether the recent graduate of the University of Washington, who was also a Turkish citizen, had been shot by Israeli troops. The White House said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing of a U.S. citizen and called on Israel to investigate what happened.
The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area of the protest.
The killing came amid a surge of violence in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, with increasing Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and heavier military crackdowns on Palestinian protests. More than 690 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials.
On Thursday, Israeli troops shot and killed a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, Bana Laboom, in her village outside the West Bank town of Nabul, Palestinian health officials said. There was no immediate military comment on the report.
Eygi, a volunteer with the activist group International Solidarity Movement, was attending a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion that has been held for years and has often brought Israeli crackdowns and protester stone-throwing.
Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli participating in Friday’s protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a communal prayer on a hillside outside the northern West Bank town of Beita overlooking the Israeli settlement of Evyatar.
Soldiers surrounded the prayer, and clashes soon broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing tear gas and live ammunition, Pollak said.
The protesters and activists retreated and clashes subdued, he said. He then watched as two soldiers on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group’s direction and fired.
He said he saw Eygi “lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death.”
Mariam Dag, another ISM activist at the protest, also said she saw an Israeli soldier on a rooftop, then heard the firing of two live bullets. One hit a Palestinian protester in the leg; the other hit Eygi. Dag said she saw blood coming from the fallen woman's head.
“The shots were coming from the direction of the army,” she said.
Eygi had just arrived in the West Bank on Tuesday, Dag said. She had been “very excited this morning to start. She was really keen on coming to the demonstration.”
“This has been happening to Palestinians for decades. This happened because of the impunity which the Israelis act with,” while Western governments do little, she said.
Two doctors confirmed Eygi was shot in the head — Dr. Ward Basalat, who administered first aid at the scene, and Dr. Fouad Naffa, director of Rafidia Hospital in Nablus where she was taken.
ISM said 17 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces at the weekly Beita protests since March 2020. A month ago, an American, Amado Sison, was shot in the leg by Israeli forces, he said, as he tried to flee tear gas and live fire.
At the University of Washington, where Eygi recently graduated with a degree in psychology, Aria Fani, a professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures, recalled Eygi's activism earlier this year at a pro-Palestinian encampment, and remembered her as someone with a gift for listening to others.
Fani said he had tried to talk Eygi out of going to the West Bank but that she told him “she needed to bear witness for the sake of her own humanity.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was “intensely focused” on determining what happened and that “we will draw the necessary conclusions and consequences from that.”
In a posting on X, the Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned “this murder carried out by” the Israeli government. Turkey will work “to ensure that those who killed our citizen is brought to justice,” ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said.
Human rights groups say Israeli soldiers who kill Palestinians – or their foreign supporters – rarely are held to account. The Israeli military says it investigates such instances and takes action if there is criminal wrongdoing.
At least three activists from the International Solidarity Movement have been killed since 2000.
Two of them were killed in Gaza in 2003. American Rachel Corrie was crushed to death as she tried to block an Israeli military bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian home. About a month later, British citizen Tom Hurndall was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier. ISM activists often place themselves between Israeli forces and Palestinians to try to stop the Israeli military from carrying out operations.
The Israeli military ruled Corrie’s death an accident, a conclusion widely rejected by rights groups. The soldier who killed Hurndall was sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison and was released after serving just over half of it.
Shireen Abu Akleh — a Palestinian-American journalist with the Al Jazeera news network – was shot to death covering an Israeli raid in the West Bank in 2022. The United States concluded an Israeli soldier likely killed her by mistake, and Israel acknowledged that was a “high probability” but not certain and ruled out a criminal investigation. Al Jazeera accuses troops of intentionally killing her.
A handful of Americans have been killed in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began, apparently by Israeli fire. Two Palestinian-American teens, Mohammad Khdour and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, were shot to death in the span of a month while driving close to their villages. The findings of U.S. and Israeli investigations into their deaths have not been released.
In a statement Thursday, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said the Biden administration has not done enough “to pursue justice and accountability” for Khdour and Abdel Jabbar. He said it must “use American influence to demand the prosecution of those responsible for harm against American citizens.”