HASYsenur Ezgi Eygi was 26 when she was shot in the head by the Israeli army on 6 September during a weekly demonstration in Beita, in the northern occupied West Bank, to protest against the spread of settlement activity.
This American-Turkish citizen was involved in the International Movement of Solidarity with the Palestinian Population (as was Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American activist who was crushed in 2003 by an Israeli army bulldozer in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, while standing in front of the machine to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian house).
US President Joe Biden dared to call the violent death of his compatriot” accident “while his administration has not exerted more pressure on Israel than during the deaths of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022 in the West Bank, or humanitarian Jacob Flickinger last April in Gaza, both Americans.
Palestinian peace activists in the crosshairs
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was killed as Israel’s colonisation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank continues with unprecedented intensity, in a context of violence that is also unprecedented since the second Intifada of 2000-2005. This Intifada then left a thousand Israelis dead and three times as many Palestinians, before ending in an Israeli victory, crowned by the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
The supremacist ministers are now calling for the Palestinian challenge in the West Bank to be treated with the same brutality as in Gaza, and indeed, since 7 October 2023, nearly 700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in this occupied territory (where twenty-four Israelis were killed). This escalation is made worse by the operations. carried out by Israel against armed groups, often based in Palestinian refugee camps. But it is part of a long history of repression of any form of opposition, even non-violent, to Israeli colonisation.
The symbol of this peaceful protest in the West Bank has long been the village of Bil’in, west of Ramallah, where weekly demonstrations have been held since 2005 to protest against the expropriation of 60% of the land and the construction of the separation wall with Israel. This non-violent mobilisation succeeded in achieving a limited readjustment of the route of the wall, which is nevertheless continuing to grow in the occupied territory. But this very relative victory was only achieved at the cost of two deaths, numerous injuries, a hundred arrests and a prolonged blockade of the village.
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