Israeli Soldiers Shoot And Kill An American Woman During A West Bank Protest
A group of Israeli, and foreign activists arranges a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion every Friday.
Today it turned fatal, when an American woman who arrived in Israeli on Tuesday, was killed.
26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who grew up in Seattle, and went to West Seattle High School and the University of Washington for her undergraduate and graduate studies, was hit in the head and killed.
Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who was 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, including Pollak and the Eygi, retreated from the hill and the clashes subdued, he said. He then watched as two soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group’s direction and shot at them. He saw the flares leave the nozzle of the gun when the shots rang out. He said Eygi was about 10 or 15 meters (yards) behind him when the shots were fired.
He then saw her “lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death,” he said.
Mariam Dag, another ISM activist at the protest, also said she saw an Israeli soldier on a rooftop. Dag said she then heard the firing of two live bullets. One ricocheted off something metal and hit a Palestinian protester in the leg; the other hit Eygi, who had moved back into an olive grove, she said. Dag said she ran toward the fallen woman and saw blood coming from her head.
“The shots were coming from the direction of the army. They were not coming from anywhere else,” she said.
Before Friday’s shooting, ISM said 17 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces at the weekly Beita protests since March 2020.
Today it turned fatal, when an American woman who arrived in Israeli on Tuesday, was killed.
26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who grew up in Seattle, and went to West Seattle High School and the University of Washington for her undergraduate and graduate studies, was hit in the head and killed.
Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who was 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, including Pollak and the Eygi, retreated from the hill and the clashes subdued, he said. He then watched as two soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group’s direction and shot at them. He saw the flares leave the nozzle of the gun when the shots rang out. He said Eygi was about 10 or 15 meters (yards) behind him when the shots were fired.
He then saw her “lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death,” he said.
Mariam Dag, another ISM activist at the protest, also said she saw an Israeli soldier on a rooftop. Dag said she then heard the firing of two live bullets. One ricocheted off something metal and hit a Palestinian protester in the leg; the other hit Eygi, who had moved back into an olive grove, she said. Dag said she ran toward the fallen woman and saw blood coming from her head.
“The shots were coming from the direction of the army. They were not coming from anywhere else,” she said.
Before Friday’s shooting, ISM said 17 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces at the weekly Beita protests since March 2020.
