The family of Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi and rights groups are renewing calls for an independent investigation into her death, one year after she was fatally shot by Israeli forces during a demonstration in the occupied West Bank.
Eygi, 26, was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a network of international activists who take part in nonviolent Palestinian protests against Israeli occupation and settlement expansion. On September 6, 2024, she attended a Friday prayer protest in the town of Beita, near Nablus, against an Israeli settlement built on a hilltop.
Witnesses said that long after the demonstration had dispersed, Israeli soldiers stationed on a rooftop fired live rounds toward demonstrators. A Palestinian boy was hit in the leg by a ricochet before a second shot struck Eygi in the head. She was rushed to a local clinic and later to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, where she was pronounced dead.
Eygi was born in Turkey and raised in Seattle, Washington. She studied psychology and Middle Eastern languages at the University of Washington, graduating in June 2024. She had previously supported the Indigenous-led Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States and organized campus events highlighting Palestinian rights.
Her father, Mehmet Suat Eygi, who traveled to Turkey’s Aydın province this week for a memorial ceremony, told the Anadolu new agency that the family continues to feel the weight of her death. “Since the moment we were told Ayşenur had died, it has been impossible to breathe normally. It feels like a stone has been on my chest for a year,” he said. He vowed to continue his daughter’s activism by speaking publicly about her life and about Israeli violence in Palestine.
Eygi’s family and her husband have repeatedly urged the US government to open an independent investigation, noting that she was a US citizen. To date Washington has not launched a probe, referring instead to Israel’s own internal review. That inquiry, conducted by the Israeli military, concluded it was “highly likely” she had been unintentionally struck by its forces, but no findings have been published.
The United Nations human rights office has criticized the lack of progress, saying the case exemplifies a broader pattern of impunity in which killings of Palestinians and international activists by Israeli forces rarely lead to accountability.
Rights groups have linked Eygi’s death to a wider escalation of violence by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank since 2024. According to Palestinian officials, more than 19 people have been killed during demonstrations in Beita alone in recent years.
Her killing also came as Israel intensified its military campaign in Gaza, launched in response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. That campaign, which has included extensive bombardment, mass displacement and restrictions on humanitarian aid, has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health authorities.
Leading international organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have concluded that Israel’s military operations in Gaza amount to genocide.
On September 1 the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the world’s foremost academic body on the subject, passed a resolution declaring that Israel’s campaign meets the definition of genocide under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.