Maureen Clare Murphy
The Electronic Intifada / September 15, 2024
Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was buried on Saturday, one week and a day after the 26-year-old American activist was shot dead by an Israeli military sniper in the occupied West Bank.
Her body was transferred to Turkey, her birth country, for burial on Friday. Earlier in the week, a funeral procession was held in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, near where she was killed, her body draped in the Palestinian flag.
The international fallout following her killing is just beginning to unfold, bringing both Israeli impunity into the spotlight and the lengths to which Washington goes to shield Tel Aviv from accountability – even in the case of American citizens intentionally killed by Israeli forces.
Eygi was struck by a bullet in her head after two shots rang out during a period of calm following a protest against land theft and settlements in Beita, a Palestinian village in the northern West Bank. A Palestinian teenager was wounded but survived.
She is the 18th person to be killed by the Israeli military in the context of Beita’s protests since 2020, all the others were Palestinians. Those protests began after the establishment of Evyatar, a settlement outpost that has become a symbolic site for the settlement movement, on village land.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said that it had conducted an internal “inquiry” that found that it is “highly likely that [Eygi] was hit indirectly and unintentionally” by its fire during what it claimed to be “a violent riot.”
The military claimed that the fire was “aimed at the key instigator of the riot,” and not Eygi, and “expresses its deepest regret” for her death.
That same day, US President Joe Biden echoed Israel’s assertions, telling reporters that “apparently it was an accident, and ricocheted off the ground and just got hit by accident, blew up.”
Israel’s claim of an unintentional hit, and Biden’s physics-defying bullet, is directly contradicted by testimony from eyewitnesses to Eygi’s killing and an autopsy finding that the young activist was shot directly in the head.
Eyewitnesses also said that the situation was calm when Eygi was shot and protesters had retreated toward the entrance of the village – as corroborated by an investigation from The Washington Post.
“Eygi was shot more than a half-hour after the height of confrontations in Beita,” according to paper, “and some 20 minutes after protesters had moved down the main road — more than 200 yards away from Israeli forces.”
‘Semblance of legality’
The Post’s confirmation that Israeli forces lied about the circumstances of Eygi’s killing is of little surprise, given that Palestinians are routinely killed by Israeli soldiers who face little scrutiny or consequences for their actions – unless their target holds US citizenship.
According to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli military’s open-fire regulations allow for the use of live ammunition only when “security forces or other individuals are in life-threatening danger” and when “there is no other way to avert the danger.”
“Members of the security forces may only shoot at a person’s legs, as the last phase in an attempt to arrest the person in question,” according to B’Tselem, “only after they have given warning and fired in the air, and only when no one else is in danger of getting hurt.”
But these regulations are “repeatedly violated, sometimes on the orders of senior ranking officers or with their consent,” B’Tselem adds. In practice, the term “life-threatening” is expanded so broadly as to include stone-throwing or tire-burning during protests, even when no soldier is actually in danger.
Despite thousands of Palestinian casualties – the Israeli military has killed at least 640 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 140 children, over the past year alone – incidents are only rarely investigated. And when they are, “no further action is taken,” according to B’Tselem, except in a handful of cases in which low-ranking soldiers have been put on trial.
Instead of codifying the conduct of Israeli troops towards Palestinians living under military rule, the open-fire regulations “create a semblance of legality,” according to B’Tselem.
The regulations, along with the Israeli military’s sham self-investigation mechanisms, are intended in part to deter the scrutiny of international tribunals, with the International Criminal Court pursuing prosecution for war crimes only when relief cannot be found in domestic courts.
US fosters culture of impunity
Biden issued a longer statement on Wednesday, saying he was “outraged and deeply saddened” by Eygi’s death. He added that “the shooting that led to her death is totally unacceptable” – a carefully crafted sentence implying that the gunman didn’t deliberately target her.
“Israel has acknowledged its responsibility for Ayşenur’s death,” Biden stated, “and a preliminary investigation has indicated that it was the result of a tragic error resulting from an unnecessary escalation.”
He added that Washington “has had full access to Israel’s preliminary investigation, and expects continued access as the investigation continues, so that we can have confidence in the result.”
The president demanded “full accountability” and said that “Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”
Biden’s statement appeared to absolve Israel of wilfully killing an American citizen, and his deference to the military’s sham self-investigation mechanism ensures that there will be no accountability for Eygi’s death.
The Biden administration helped cover up the killing of another US citizen – Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh – in the northern West Bank in 2022. An analysis of the bullet that killed the iconic journalist while she was on assignment was determined to be a 5.56mm caliber round designed and manufactured in the US – a type commonly used by the Israeli army.
A documentary produced by Al Jazeera, where Abu Akleh had worked since 1997, shows how the US relied on Israel’s self-investigation to conclude that she was likely killed by an Israeli soldier, though not intentionally.
Eyewitness testimony and independent investigations pointed to the wilful killing of Abu Akleh by a marksman who “was determined and deliberately targeting the journalists in that incident,” according to a researcher with the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq who was interviewed for the documentary.
The FBI reportedly opened an investigation, “but has provided no further information about the status of its investigation, two years since [Abu Akleh’s] killing,” according to the Washington-based human rights watchdog DAWN.
Al Jazeera filed a request to the International Criminal Court to investigate the killing of their correspondent and prosecute those responsible.
The State Department said that it objected to the tribunal probing her death as part of its “longstanding objections to the ICC’s investigation into the Palestinian situation.”
Washington’s cover-up of the deliberate killing of Abu Akleh and opposition to international justice has fostered a culture of impunity leading to the killing of more than 150 Palestinian journalists by Israeli forces in Gaza since 7 October 2023 – most if not all of those deaths presumably involving US-sourced weapons.
And now it has cost the life of Eygi – one of three US citizens killed by Israeli forces and armed civilians in the West Bank since the beginning of the year. American citizens Tawfic Abdel Jabbar and Mohammed Khdour, both 17 years old, were shot in the head while traveling in cars in separate incidents.
Calls for sanctions
DAWN called for the FBI to open an investigation into the killing of Eygi “and to hold all those responsible for the murder accountable under the Justice for Victims of War Crimes Act.”
The rights group also said that the State Department should determine whether the Israeli military “used US weapons to kill her, and provide a public accounting of how many US citizens the [Israeli military] has killed or injured since 7 October 2023 and the status of any US investigations into these killings and injuries.”
Jonathan Pollak, a longtime Israeli anti-occupation activist who witnessed Eygi’s killing, said that the bullet removed from the slain woman’s head was consistent with a 5.56mm bullet “like those fired from American-made assault rifles like the M4 commonly used by the Israeli military,” according to DAWN.
Michael Shaeffer Omer-Man, a program director at DAWN, called on the US to determine “what Israeli unit was responsible for killing Eygi, investigate whether they used US-made weapons, and if so, consider halting all military assistance to the Israeli unit pursuant to the Leahy Law.”
The US Leahy Law, named for the senator who championed it, prohibits US aid from funding units of a foreign country’s forces “where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.”
DAWN said that the Biden administration “should publicly announce steps it is taking to prevent Israel from using US-supplied weapons to kill not only American citizens, but civilians in general.”
“This should include deploying its full diplomatic weight to achieve an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza,” DAWN added, “and restricting the provision of military assistance to Israel, in accordance with US laws that prohibit aid to countries that are responsible for gross violations of human rights.”
So far there is little prospect of that happening.
In January 2022 in the occupied West Bank, soldiers from Israel’s Netzah Yehuda battalion detained and brutalized Omar Assad, a 78-year-old Palestinian American grandfather, leading to his death.
In April this year, the State Department said it had launched an investigation into whether to sanction the Israeli unit, in line with the Leahy Law.
But last month the State Department announced that it had decided not to do so, and that the Netzah Yehuda battalion could continue receiving American funding and weaponry – a decision that left Assad’s family devastated.
Turkey seeks justice as US shores up occupation
Where the US is abdicating its responsibility, Turkey is stepping in.
Yilmaz Tunc, the justice minister in Ankara, said that “Turkey had evidence regarding the killing and would make international arrest requests,” according to Reuters.
By contrast, the Biden administration in Washington has only “expressed outrage over Eygi’s killing” but has “not acknowledged her family’s calls for a US probe, saying instead that they are leaning on Israel’s investigation for answers,” as MSNBC reported on Thursday.
Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, the US secretaries of state and defense, respectively, called Eygi’s killing “unprovoked and unjustified.”
Blinken told reporters that “Israeli security forces need to make some fundamental changes in the way that they operate in the West Bank, including changes to their rules of engagement.”
These statements appear intended only to assuage anger at Washington’s complicity in and inaction over Israel’s killings of Americans, rather than to presage any effective response.
At best, Blinken was calling on Israel to reform its military rule over Palestinians in the West Bank – an occupation that the International Court of Justice declared unlawful in a landmark ruling handed down in July.
The tribunal, also known as the World Court, stated that Israel is obliged to “bring an end to its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible,” halt all new settlement activity and evacuate all settlers.
Israel is also obliged to make reparations, the court declared, and other states and international organizations must not “recognize as legal” Israel’s presence in the occupied territory or render assistance in maintaining the occupation.
The court confirmed that the obligation to affirmatively act to end the illegal occupation does not fall on Israel alone, but on all states.
All countries around the world are “under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence” in the occupied Palestinian territories, the judges stated in their ruling.
Principal in rendering aid and assistance in maintaining Israel’s illegal occupation is the United States.
Washington has provided more than $300 billion in economic and military aid to Israel since it was founded in 1948, with that aid spiking after the 1967 War and conquest and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The US has insisted on a negotiated bilateral agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Washington has thereby undercut demands that Israel comply with international law and has allowed it to tighten its control over Palestinian land.
American officials claim that efforts to hold Israel to international law “complicate efforts to resolve the conflict,” as it has said in the context of the World Court ruling on the occupation and regarding legally binding UN demands to end genocidal acts in Gaza.
Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada
