Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was 26 years old when she was shot in the head by the Israeli army on September 6 during a weekly demonstration in Beita, which lies to the north of the occupied West Bank, to protest against the extension of settlements.
The American-Turkish citizen was involved in the International Solidarity Movement, a peace movement supporting the Palestinian population (as was Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American activist, crushed in 2003 by an Israeli army bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza Strip as she stood in front of the machine to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian house).
American President Joe Biden dared to describe the violent death of his compatriot as an "accident" while his administration exerted no more pressure on Israel than it did after the death of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022 in the West Bank, or humanitarian Jacob Flickinger, last April in Gaza, both Americans.
Eygi was killed at a time when Israeli colonization of East Jerusalem and the West Bank continues unabated, against a backdrop of violence unprecedented since the second Intifada of 2000-2005. That Intifada left around 1,000 Israelis dead and three times as many Palestinians, before ending in an Israeli victory, crowned by the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Supremacist ministers now call for treating the Palestinian challenge in the West Bank with the same brutality as in Gaza, and indeed, since October 7, 2023, nearly 700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in this occupied territory (where 24 Israelis have died). Such escalation is compounded by Israeli operations against armed groups, often based in Palestinian refugee camps. But it is part of a long history of repression of any form of opposition, however non-violent, to Israeli colonization.
The symbol of this pacifist protest in the West Bank has long been the village of Bil'in, west of Ramallah, where demonstrations have been held on a weekly basis since 2005 to protest against the expropriation of 60% of the land as a result of the construction of the separation wall with Israel. This type of non-violent protest succeeded in wresting a limited readjustment of the wall's route, which nevertheless continues through occupied territory. But this small victory was only achieved at the cost of two deaths, numerous injuries, around 100 arrests and a prolonged blockade of the village.
5 Broken Cameras, nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2013, follows the saga of Bil'in's collective resistance. For their part, the few hundred residents of Nabi Saleh have been demonstrating since 2009 to protest against encroachments by the neighboring settlement of Halamish. In December 2017, a village teenager Mohammed Tamimi was disfigured by an Israeli shot to the head shortly before his cousin, 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, was jailed for eight months for daring to slap an Israeli soldier who had barged into her home. Nabi Saleh, regularly sealed off by the occupying army, is still mourning the deaths of a 19-year-old resident, in October 2022, and a 2-year-old child, in June 2023.
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