Israeli soldiers killed an American woman during an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank on Friday, a witness told The Associated Press, in a shooting that raised calls from Washington for an investigation.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed the death of the 26-year-old woman born in Turkey as Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. The White House said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing.
Eygi was also a Turkish citizen, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said, adding that the country would exert “all effort to ensure that those who killed our citizen is brought to justice.”
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.
Elsewhere in the territory, Israeli forces appeared to have withdrawn from three refugee camps after a more-than-weeklong military operation that left dozens dead and a trail of destruction. Israel says the large-scale raids in the territory were aimed at dismantling militant groups and preventing attacks. Palestinians fear a widening of the war in Gaza.
The United Nations says the humanitarian situation in Gaza is “beyond catastrophic,” with more than 1 million Palestinians not receiving any food rations in August and a 35% drop in people getting daily cooked meals. Health workers resumed vaccinating children against polio in the southern Gaza Strip early Friday for the second phase of a massive immunization campaign.
The war began after Hamas launched a wide-scale attack into Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people. Israel's campaign in response has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and fighters in its toll.
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Eygi was a longstanding activist against injustice, said Aria Fani, a UW assistant professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures. The two met after Fani gave a guest lecture on feminist cinema of the Middle East, and Eygi signed up for Fani’s translation class.
Eygi was also extremely critical of Turkish treatment of minority populations, including the Kurdish people, he said, and was an instrumental part of a pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Washington earlier this year.
As a teen she traveled to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation to join the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline’s controversial Missouri River crossing. The protests ultimately drew thousands of people, lasting from about August 2016 to February 2017.
“I remember her telling me how cold it would get at night, and how they would dance to keep themselves warm,” Fani said Friday afternoon.
Eygi had a gift for truly listening to others, he said, and was easy to talk to.
“She was so cognizant of her place as a white-passing Turkish American woman, and really worked to create a space for people who had generational and historical traumas to share what they had gone through,” he said. “She never took for granted that sharing trauma is incredibly powerful and vulnerable, and when someone is doing that they are giving you so much trust.”
Fani tried to talk Eygi out of going to the West Bank – something he had done years earlier. But, he said, that she told him "That she needed to bear witness for the sake of her own humanity.”
She has a husband who lives in Seattle who is devastated, and many, many peers and professors who are reeling from this tragedy,” Fani said.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state condemned the killing. “The government of Israel must deliver answers immediately and hold the perpetrators of this killing accountable,’’ Murray said in a statement.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal called Eygi’s death a terrible tragedy, and said her office was actively working to gather more information on the events that led to her death.
“I am very troubled by the reports that she was killed by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers. The Netanyahu government has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank, often encouraged by right-wing ministers of the Netanyahu government,” Jayapal wrote in the prepared statement. “The killing of an American citizen is a terrible proof point in this senseless war of rising tensions in the region.”
Eygi graduated earlier this year from the University of Washington with a psychology degree. She also studied middle eastern languages and cultures while at the university in her hometown of Seattle.
University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce released a statement Friday calling Eygi’s death “awful news” and sending condolences to her family and friends.
“Aysenur was a peer mentor in psychology who helped welcome new students to the department and provided a positive influence in their lives,” Cauce wrote. “This is the second time over the past year that violence in the region has taken the life of a member of our UW community and I again join with our government and so many who are working and calling for a cease-fire and resolution to the crisis.”
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — International Criminal Court prosecutors have withdrawn an application for an arrest warrant for Hamas’ former top political leader Ismail Haniyeh after he was killed in an airstrike in the Iranian capital on July 31.
Haniyeh was one of three Hamas leaders for whom Prosecutor Karim Khan sought an arrest warrant in May, alleging that they were responsible for atrocities in the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel that sparked the Gaza war.
Israel says it also has killed another of the three, Mohammed Deif, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.
A panel of judges at the court is still considering applications for warrants for the Hamas leaders as well as for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Netanyahu insists Israel adheres to the laws of war and has slammed the request for warrants as a “disgrace” and an attack on Israel and its military.
No date has been set for a decision on the remaining requests for warrants, but Khan has urged judges to act swiftly.
WASHINGTON —The White House said Friday it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing of a U.S. citizen during a West Bank protest earlier in the day, and called on Israel to investigate what led to the killing.
“We are deeply disturbed by the tragic death of an American citizen, Aysrnur Egzi Eygi, today in the West Bank and our hearts go out to her family and loved ones,” White House national security spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement. “We have reached out to the Government of Israel to ask for more information and request an investigation into the incident.”
The woman was believed to have been shot while attending the protest against settlement expansion in the Palestinian town of Beita, north of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The protests happen regularly and have grown violent in the past. A month ago, American citizen Amado Sison was shot in the leg by Israeli forces, he said, as he tried to flee tear gas and live fire.
JERUSALEM — Two doctors told The Associated Press that an American woman was shot and killed in the West Bank.
Dr. Ward Basalat said that the 26-year-old woman was shot in the head and died after arriving at the hospital on Friday.
Witnesses and Palestinian media reported that the woman was shot by Israeli troops while attending a pro-Palestinian demonstration against settlement expansion in the northern West Bank. The Israeli military didn’t immediately comment on the shooting. Dr. Fouad Naffa, the head of the hospital, also confirmed the death of an American citizen.
JERUSALEM — The parents of a prominent Israeli American hostage whose body was recovered from Gaza said they want a Hamas propaganda video of him to serve as a “wake-up call to the world” to free the remaining hostages.
“No other family should go through what our family (and the families of the other recently executed hostages ) have endured," wrote Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, the parents of 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
In the undated video taken before he was killed and circulated Thursday by Hamas, Goldberg-Polin speaks under duress, saying he survived in Gaza with no medical care and little food or water, criticizing the Israel government for bombarding Gaza rather than agreeing to a deal, and calling on United States President Joe Biden to end the war.
He addresses his family, prominent faces in the fight to free the captives, directly: “I know you’re doing everything you can and you’re out in the streets trying to bring me home now. I need you to stay strong for me, keep on fighting and hopefully I believe I will be home soon.”
Similar videos, condemned by Israel as psychological warfare, were released by Hamas throughout the week after six hostage bodies were recovered from a Gaza tunnel. The Israeli military says they were killed by their Hamas captors as Israeli soldiers drew near. Hamas has threatened to kill other hostages if Israel tries to rescue them.
There are around 70 hostages in Gaza who have not yet been confirmed dead by the Israeli government, out of roughly 100.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Health workers resumed vaccinating children against polio in the southern Gaza Strip early Friday for the second phase of a massive immunization campaign.
Children lined up early in the morning outside a United Nations health center in Khan Younis to receive the vaccine, which was being administered by local health care crews in coordination with UNICEF and the World Health Organization.
The first phase started Sunday in hospitals and medical locations in the central Gaza Strip. UNICEF said that, by Wednesday, 189,000 children were vaccinated. The final phase focusing on the north will finish Sept. 9. In all, the WHO hopes to be able to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children in Gaza against polio.
The large-scale operation was undertaken as an urgent measure meant to prevent a polio outbreak after health officials confirmed the first polio case in 25 years — in a 10-month-old boy who is now paralyzed in the leg.
The WHO reached an agreement with Israel for limited pauses in the fighting to allow for the vaccination campaign to take place.
Most people who have polio do not experience symptoms, and those who do usually recover in a week or so. But there is no cure, and when polio causes paralysis it is usually permanent. If the paralysis affects breathing muscles, the disease can be fatal.
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Israeli forces appeared Friday to have withdrawn from the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, after a more-than-weeklong military operation that has left dozens dead and a trail of destruction.
In the quiet morning Friday, Jenin residents took advantage of the lull to rummage through the rubble of destroyed buildings and take stock of the damage. Twisted rebar protruded from the concrete of collapsed buildings, and walls still standing were pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel.
During the operation, Israeli military officials said they were targeting militants in Jenin, Tulkarem and the Al-Faraa refugee camp curb recent attacks against Israeli civilians they say have become more sophisticated and deadly.
Troops were pulled out of the Tulkarem camp by Friday morning and had left Al-Faraa earlier, but in a statement the Israeli military suggested the operation was not yet over.
“Israeli security forces are continuing to act in order to achieve the objectives of the counterterrorism operation,” the military said in a statement.
TEL AVIV, Israel — Germany’s foreign minister says the Israel-Hamas war can't be resolved with a purely military approach and pressed for a cease-fire in a meeting Friday with her Israeli counterpart.
Speaking Friday after meeting in Israel with Israel Katz, Annalena Baerbock pointed to the killing of six hostages by Hamas the previous week as Israeli troops appeared to be moving to rescue them.
“We saw last weekend that purely military pressure endangers the lives of the hostages," she said, adding that the fate of the remaining hostages should take priority.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on a demand that has emerged as a major sticking point in talks: continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons into Gaza. Egypt and Hamas deny it.
Baerbock said she understands Israel’s security concerns, and specifically those about the corridor — “but solutions can be found for this together” and the European Union is prepared to help if it can.