Israeli soldiers shot and killed an American-Turkish protester endangering no one in the town of Beita [EN/AR/HE]

On Friday, 6 September 2024, about 100-150 Palestinians from the town of Beita and around 20 international and Israeli activists gathered for the weekly demonstration against the outpost of Evyatar, built on town land in Jabal Sbeih. Soldiers arrived before noon and deployed near the public park in the area of the Nimer grove, on a hill in the southern part of the town, where prayers are regularly held before the demonstration. At around 12:15 P.M., as locals gathered for the prayers, Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, an international activist, arrived in the area with other international activists. The prayers proceeded without incident, and then, at around 1:00 P.M., the residents and activists began leaving through the park gate. Most of the residents began making their way back home, with some heading for their cars in the parking lot at the entrance to the park and others walking down the road towards town homes.

At that point, the soldiers advanced towards the park gate and clashes developed with local youths, during which the youths threw stones and the soldiers fired tear gas and live rounds at them. Down the road, some youths set tires on fire, while the other residents and the activists retreated towards the town. The activists went to the intersection further down the road, near some olive groves and homes. Some of them took shelter in the groves, while the soldiers remained up the hill, more than 200 meters away. Two or three military jeeps were parked near two homes below the park, and some soldiers took over the roof of one of them. At that point, the clashes had ended, and residents were blocking the road that leads from the park to town homes with rocks and a dumpster, to stop the soldiers from raiding the town.

Ezgi Eygi was among the activists who hid in the olive grove. At 1:48 P.M., after about 20 minutes of relative calm, two shots were fired in succession at the olive grove, from the roof taken over by soldiers. One bullet hit a metal object, and a fragment of it hit a teen from the town in the buttocks. He was lightly wounded and treated on the spot. The other bullet hit Ezgi Eygi, who was standing about 15 meters away from the injured boy, in the head. She fell to the ground, unconscious. Within several minutes, she was put in an ambulance that had been standing by and was taken to a hospital in Nablus, where physicians tried to resuscitate her unsuccessfully. She was pronounced dead at around 2:30 P.M.

The killing of an American-Turkish citizen attracted a great deal of media attention, prompting the Israeli military, which rarely publicizes investigations into the death of Palestinians anymore, to release what it called a “preliminary investigation” on 10 September 2024, based entirely on statements soldiers gave as part of the operational review. The military said Ezgi Eygi was shot “with high probability by indirect and unintended IDF fire that was aimed at a central instigator.” This claim is unreasonable, and B’Tselem’s investigation disproves it. First, testimonies B’Tselem collected reveal the clashes were over by the time the shooting occurred, and that the soldiers were positioned in an elevated location overlooking the area, where they were under no threat from the Palestinians and activists who were far away from them inside the olive grove, so there was no justification to use lethal fire. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the shot that hit Ezgi Eygi squarely in the head was aimed at another person, when the only person next to her was another international activist.

As previously reported by B’Tselem, the outpost of Evyatar was established on Palestinian land, not as the private initiative of a few settlers but as part of Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank, with the full cooperation of all the relevant Israeli authorities. For the state, stealing land and putting settlements on them is not enough, and it also insists on forbidding Palestinian residents from protesting these acts, using force – some of it lethal – to quash any attempt at resistance.

Background

Ever since the outpost of Evyatar was put up in May 2021, Beita residents have protested its establishment and the theft of their land. As it generally does responds to demonstrations in the West Bank, the Israeli military suppressed the Beita protests with violence from the very beginning, applying a lethal open-fire policy that resulted in the killing of eight protesters – seven from Beita and one from Yatma – and the injury of hundreds. Since the outpost was established, the military has also killed seven residents of the town in clashes that broke out in its area, separately from the weekly demonstrations. The military has also used other oppressive measures against the protesters, including staging nightly raids and mass arrests, blocking the entrance to the town, wreaking destruction in the town’s olive groves with bulldozers, and revoking work permits.

The protests stopped when the war began in October 2023, but resumed on a smaller scale in mid-June 2024, after Israel declared 66 dunams on the hill as state land, in the process of retroactively approving the outpost. Since then, the military has blocked the protests altogether, no longer allowing protesters to advance towards the outpost or the main road as they did in the past. In addition, as in other demonstrations in the West Bank, the open-fire policy has clearly changed: soldiers no longer use less lethal weapons such as rubber-coated metal bullets or sponge bullets, but instead resort immediately to live fire in addition to tear gas.

Establishing settlements is illegal under international law, as recently held in the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice. Israel’s policy of banning all Palestinian demonstrations in the Occupied Territories, especially ones protesting the expansion of its illegal settlement project, coupled with a lethally permissive open-fire policy, is what led to Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi’s needless death. This policy is yet another tool for preserving and entrenching Israel’s apartheid regime, and nothing more.

Below are some of the testimonies B’Tselem collected:

Eran Maoz, 23, said in a testimony he gave B’Tselem data coordinator Itay Feitelson on 12 September 2024:

I started taking part in these demonstrations about two years ago. They used to start with prayers on the hill where the park is, and then people would try to walk over to the next hill, Jabal Sbeih, where the outpost was established. The army’s conduct kept changing. Sometimes, the soldiers would stand at various points on Jabal Sbeih and fire tear gas and maybe “rubber” bullets and sponge rounds at demonstrators in the valley between the two hills. Sometimes, the soldiers would come to the area between the hill with the park and the main road, and then instead of going towards Jabal Sbeih, the demonstrators would leave the park and go left towards the road and the troops. They would walk on for a few hundred meters there, and then the army would fire tear gas and “rubber” bullets and sponge rounds at them.

Since the demonstrations started up again a few months ago, the army sometimes hasn’t even allowed protesters to go up to the park to pray, and sends soldiers in advance to block the two paths leading to that hill. At other times, soldiers waited by the park when the people went to pray, and when the prayer ended and people started to get up, they started firing tear gas and live fire. Unlike the past, I think they don’t use “rubber” bullets or sponge rounds anymore, just tear gas and live fire. The same thing happened in this demonstration.

Last Friday, I got there with some other activists around 1:00 P.M., towards the end of the prayers, and we stood at the entrance to the park just as people were starting to come out. We saw soldiers standing on the left (if you’re facing the park), on the far side of the parking lot. They were less than 100 meters away from the people, but far enough so that people weren’t afraid to go in and out of the park. As I said, when we got there, people were starting to leave. Because I was standing outside, I don’t know for sure if people also left from the back entrance of the park, towards Jabal Sbeih. A lot of people came out in my direction, maybe everyone. While they were coming out, the army started shooting. At first, they fired tear gas canisters, but within a few minutes we heard gunfire, too, and it was clear from the sound that it was live fire. People rushed to get into cars and took off from there, and those who were on foot also started running away, heading down the road to the first line of homes at the bottom of the hill.

Rob Sadler, 25, said in a testimony he gave B’Tselem data coordinator Itay Feitelson on 12 September 2024:

I arrived in Beita around 12:15 P.M. with Ayşenur and two other activists, and we went to the park at the edge of the town. The army was already there – on the other side of the entrance. Some of the men were already sitting there, waiting for prayers, and we sat with them, talked and ate dates. I talked to Ayşe about her plans and her life, a personal conversation. She also told me about what faith meant to her. I didn’t know she was of Turkish descent before that, and I also speak Turkish, so we had a nice conversation in Turkish.

Around the time the prayer started, she told me she was nervous because of how close the army was. When the prayer started, everything was very peaceful. I sat with Ayşe on the side through most of the prayer, and she participated in it from where we were sitting.

When the prayer was over, I think it was a little after 1:00 P.M., we left the park. Most of the older people went straight home. The others stayed with us, the international volunteers, on the road next to the park. We saw the army was on our left, at the end of the parking lot. I’m not sure how it started, but almost immediately, the soldiers started firing tear gas in our direction, and some of the locals threw stones at the soldiers, including with a slingshot. Others burned tires further down the hill. Then we started going back a little, and we heard live fire. We went further back. It was around 1:10 P.M. We kept going down the hill and as we did, the soldiers kept firing tear gas around us. We went down the hill, and I saw Ayşe, who was with another activist relatively low down, filming.

As we went down, we noticed the army had put soldiers on the roof of one of the houses to the right of the park, maybe on other roofs too. At some point, I couldn’t see the other volunteers. I called them and they said they were down the road. I told them to stay down there and that I would meet them there. We kept going down, and I saw Ayşe at the bottom and another activist, around the intersection near the olive groves. I suggested they didn’t get too close to the intersection or to the roads that were exposed to snipers. Every time I peeked behind a car or a building, I saw the snipers were still on the roof of the house. There were quite a lot of soldiers there, both on the roof and on the road, pointing their weapons at us. The soldiers also continued firing tear gas in our direction, but it didn’t really reach us because we were so far away.

Mariam Dag said in a testimony she gave B’Tselem data coordinator Itay Feitelson on 13 September 2024:

We were in the terraced groves. I was with a group that was on a terrace closer to the road, and Ayşenur and another activist were standing under an olive tree in the terrace below us, a little farther from the road. We were all visible. We weren’t hidden. After the shooting, we went back to Beita several times to figure out what happened there and checked it out. Everything was clearly visible from the rooftop where the soldiers were, both the spot where we were and the tree Ayşenur was standing next to. There were some Palestinians in the area, but not really close to us, and I think not close to Ayşenur, either. It was relatively quiet. We were just standing there, waiting, like in other demonstrations, and then I heard two live shots. One of them clearly hit a metal object, I’m not sure what, maybe a lamp post or a dumpster, and a bullet fragment hit a Palestinian kid. The shooting took place when there was nothing happening, definitely not near us.

A few seconds after that, I heard one of my friends calling me, so I turned around and started going down, and I saw Ayşenur on the ground. I ran over there and saw she was bleeding from the head. She was unconscious. I called other people, who came over, and we called the ambulance that was very close by, on the next road over. The paramedics put her in the ambulance and I went with them. At first, we went to the clinic in Beita, and then almost immediately from there to a hospital in Nablus. That whole time, she was unconscious, but I think she still had a pulse. At the hospital they tried to resuscitate her, but she didn’t make it. I think she was pronounced dead at around 2:30 P.M.

Helen O’Sullivan, 62, said in a testimony she gave B’Tselem data coordinator Itay Feitelson on 12 September 2024:

Aysenur and I were too busy retreating to document anything much. We took a few moments to rest and to breathe behind an olive tree, believing we were relatively safe. We stayed there for a while and it seemed quiet and calm. Aysenur was just an arm’s length from me on my left, and we were both looking up the hill to where the soldiers were. I suspect Aysenur leant over to get a clearer took around the edge of the tree. Within seconds, I heard the sharp deafening sound of a shot.

I watched in horror as Aysenur dropped to the ground. My first thought was that she was ducking and fell. Her face was on the ground. Her head was facing downhill, her legs slightly curled and facing uphill. I grabbed her right shoulder to turn her over to see her face. There was blood on the left side of her temple and coming from her nose. Her eyes were open and one was rolled back. She was not responding. I shouted for help and within seconds other volunteers arrived, including the nearby ambulance.

I was not looking at Aysenur in the seconds before she was shot, so I cannot say for sure exactly where she was looking. But we were relatively still, as were those few volunteers just 10 meters in front of us. There was no communication from the Israeli soldiers. It was as if they had completed their mission.

Munir Khader, 65, a father of ten, said in a testimony he gave B’Tselem field researcher Salma a-Deb’i on 12 September 2024:

I live near the park, and after the prayers I went home. I was surprised when three military jeeps pulled over and about seven soldiers got out. They raided our house and went up to the roof of my daughter Jinan and her husband ‘Ali, who live next door. One of them set up his rifle on a stand on the ledge of the roof. I understood he was planning on targeting someone. I was terrified. I couldn’t stay there. I went to the other side of the house. The soldiers fired tear gas canisters from a system mounted on one of the jeeps, and soldiers who were outside the jeeps fired live shots.

After the soldier put the weapon on the stand, he fired only two shots. After the sniping, I saw him raise both hands and signal victory. He signaled to his friend, who signaled back that he’d done a good job – as if they were hunting animals and not a human being. I heard residents shouting for the ambulance to come. I called a relative and asked who was hurt. They told me it was an international activist and that she was hit in the head. She was taken away in the ambulance.

I felt sorry for her. Later, I saw her picture and recognized her from the prayer. She was very nice and talked to everyone and wished us well. She knew a few words in Arabic. I found out it was the first time she’d taken part in activity in our community, and that she’d arrived in the country only two days earlier.

The next day, at around 10:30 A.M., about six military jeeps and a white Israeli DCO jeep arrived. They must have been investigating. They had a drone with them, filming. After some time, a jeep drove up to the door of my daughter Jinan’s house, and the soldiers asked me about what happened. I told them they were the ones causing trouble and that their very presence was creating problems. They went up to the roof and reenacted the shooting.