Israeli snipers under renewed surveillance after civilian death

Aysenur Eygi came to Israel with a passionate mission. The 26-year-old American activist and recent graduate of the University of Washington volunteered for the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group, and traveled to the occupied West Bank to take part in the organization's routine attendance and monitoring of Palestinian protests against illegal Israeli settlements.

Eygi was shot dead on Friday on the sidelines of a Palestinian protest against the expansion of Israeli settlements near the town of Beita. According to eyewitnesses, she was beaten to death by Israeli soldiers. Nablus Governor Ghassan Daghlas later told reporters that an autopsy had “confirmed that Eygi was killed by a bullet in the head fired by an Israeli occupation sniper.”

Jonathan Pollak, an ISM volunteer, told the Washington Post that the shooting occurred about half an hour after protesters dispersed, when there were no active clashes or stone throwing and foreign volunteers, including Eygi, stood about 200 meters away from the Israeli military and watched. “There was no justification for that shooting,” he said.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that they were “investigating reports that a foreign national was killed by gunfire in the area” and “details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are being examined.” The statement said Israel Defense Forces in the Beita area “responded with fire to a main instigator of the violence who threw stones at the forces and posed a threat to them.”

If the Israeli military's response sounds familiar, that's just as well. Last week, a similar statement was made when Israeli snipers reportedly killed 16-year-old Loujain Musleh in a West Bank town on the outskirts of Jenin – a site of months of violence – while Israeli troops stormed a nearby house. “There were snipers everywhere,” Osama Musleh, Loujain's father, told The Post the morning she was killed. She “went to the window to look,” he said, and pulled the curtain aside to see what was happening. “Then she was shot. The army fired six bullets,” including two that hit Loujain, he said.

Israeli forces in 2022 covered up the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was covering clashes in restive Jenin when she was shot in the head. They initially blamed her death on Palestinian militants, although witnesses, including Abu Akleh's colleagues at Al Jazeera, said it was clear she had been shot by Israeli troops. Subsequent investigations by a number of organizations, including an open-source forensic analysis by the Washington Post and a US government ballistics survey, concluded that she was killed by Israeli gunfire.

Israeli authorities later acknowledged that Abu Akleh may have been killed by one of their soldiers, but claimed that no Israeli soldier “intentionally shot a journalist” and provided no evidence to support that claim. No soldier was punished for her death, while the Biden administration's promises to hold the killing of an American journalist abroad to account have proven hollow and half-hearted.

That story could repeat itself in the case of Eygi, whose family has asked U.S. authorities to push for an independent investigation. The White House has so far called on Israel to investigate the incident. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that the U.S. government was “intensely focused on getting those facts.” He added: “When we have more information … we will provide it. And, if necessary, we will act on it.”

Eygi had dual US-Turkish citizenship and her killing provoked a far harsher reaction in Ankara. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said over the weekend that Israel had “murdered our little child in a heinous manner.”

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 40,972 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began. The ministry makes no distinction between civilians and fighters, but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israeli officials repeatedly stress how careful they are to avoid civilian casualties and frequently blame the loss of Palestinian civilians on Hamas, the militant group that launches its attacks on Israel from the densely populated Gaza Strip.

But the staggering destruction of the territory, the appalling humanitarian crisis suffered by Gaza's residents and the high casualty toll that has accompanied the brutal war have sharpened the focus on Israel. Parallel cases of genocide and war crimes are being tried before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Several Western governments closely allied with Israel have partially suspended their arms exports to the Jewish state, fearing that these weapons will inevitably be used to murder civilians.

Witnesses in Gaza have reported repeated incidents over the past 11 months in which they have been attacked by Israeli snipers or have seen innocent bystanders and civilians shot by them. Doctors, including some from international aid agencies working in Gaza hospitals, describe the majority of the casualties they find there as the result of airstrikes and bombings – they treat burns, shrapnel wounds and injuries from falling rubble and debris – but also cite numerous cases of people, including young children, killed by single shots to the head.

“We saw a number of children, mostly prepubescent, who had been shot in the head. They died slowly, only to be replaced by new victims who had also been shot in the head and also died slowly,” US doctors Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa wrote for Politico in July. “Their families told us one of two stories: the children were playing indoors when they were shot by Israeli forces, or they were playing in the street when they were shot by Israeli forces.”

In the fog of war, these reports are difficult to verify. Human rights groups and UN experts have documented evidence of Israeli snipers killing or wounding civilian protesters in previous conflicts in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli military has rejected claims that its soldiers deliberately target civilians.

In the case of Eygi's murder, precedent suggests there will be little accountability. “Like the olive tree under which she lay and took her last breaths, Aysenur was strong, beautiful and nurturing,” Eygi's family said in a statement. “Her presence in our lives was needlessly, unlawfully and violently taken by the Israeli military.”