[News] US Pro-Palestine woman activist shot dead by Israeli troops during West Bank protest

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 US citizen shot dead by Israeli troops during West Bank protest

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot in the head while protesting alongside
Palestinians against Jewish settlement expansion and settler violence near
Nablus

News Desk <https://thecradle.co/authors/news-desk-9>

SEP 6, 2024 -
https://thecradle.co/articles/us-citizen-shot-dead-by-israeli-troops-during-west-bank-protest
A Palestinian reacts during a protest against Israeli settlements near
Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank September 15, 2023. (Photo credit:
Raneen Sawafta/REUTERS)

Israeli forces shot and killed a female international activist during an
anti-occupation protest in the town of Beita near Nablus in the West Bank,
WAFA news agency reported <https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/148963> on
6 August.

Twenty-six-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a US citizen of Turkish descent,
died on Friday after being shot in the head with live ammunition by Israeli
forces in Beita, a town located south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Eygi was participating alongside local Palestinians in the weekly protest
against settlement expansion.

WAFA added that the activist was rushed to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus and
placed in the intensive care unit in an effort to save her life.

“We tried to perform a resuscitation operation on her, but unfortunately
she died,” Rafidia Hospital Director Fouad Nafaa told
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-citizen-killed-anti-settler-protest-west-bank-palestinian-news-agency-reports-2024-09-06/>
*Reuters*.

There was no immediate comment from the US embassy.

Local sources told WAFA that the confrontation erupted when Israeli forces
violently suppressed the Friday protest, firing live ammunition, stun
grenades, and tear gas at demonstrators. An 18-year-old Palestinian was
also injured by Israeli forces when shrapnel struck her in the thigh.

Eygi was a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and
was involved with the Faz’a campaign, which works to support and protect
Palestinian farmers from Israeli military and settler violence.

Ezgi is the third ISM volunteer to be killed by the Israeli forces in
occupied Palestine. Rachel Corrie was killed in Gaza’s Rafah in 2003 after
an Israeli soldier crushed her with a bulldozer. Tom Hurndall was killed in
Gaza in 2004 by an Israeli sniper. An Israeli soldier shot Brian Avery in
the face in Jenin in 2003. He survived the attack but was permanently
maimed. The bullet ripped through his cheek and smashed his eye socket and
jaw bones.

The Israeli army’s killing of Eygi comes amid a broader increase in settler
attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank. The settler movement seeks
to expel Palestinians from their land to pave the way for Jewish settlement.

Earlier this month, more than 70 armed Jewish settlers invaded
<https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/15/middleeast/israeli-settlers-set-west-bank-village-ablaze-intl/index.html>
the Palestinian town of Jit in the occupied West Bank, firing bullets and
tear gas at residents and setting several homes and cars and other property
on fire.

Settlers killed 23-year-old Rashid Sedda during the pogrom. The Palestinian
Authority’s Ministry of Health confirmed
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/pa-calls-settler-violence-in-jit-organized-state-terrorism/>
the young Palestinian died due to a gunshot wound to the chest.

“We have attacks but nothing to this level,” the head of Jit’s village
council, Nasser Sedda, told CNN. “We haven’t seen anything like this
before, and without a prior warning. They caught the people off guard –
women, children, and elders were there.”

“Dozens of Israeli civilians, some of them masked, entered the town of Jit
and set fire to vehicles and structures in the area, hurled rocks and
Molotov cocktails,” the Israeli military said in a statement
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