American Woman Killed in Israel, State Department Confirms

Israeli soldiers operate in village of Sarra near the West Bank city of Nablus on March 12, 2023. Majdi Mohammed/AP Photo

The White House has confirmed that an American woman was fatally shot in Nablus, in the West Bank, on Sept. 6.

The woman was identified as 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi of Seattle, a recent graduate of the University of Washington and also a Turkish citizen.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press conference that the U.S. government is investigating the incident and wouldn’t confirm whether the Israeli military fired the fatal shot.

“We are intensely focused on getting those facts,” Blinken said. “And any actions that we take are driven by the facts. So first things first, let’s find out exactly what happened, and we will draw the necessary conclusions.”

Israeli doctors Ward Basalat and Fouad Naffa said a 26-year-old woman died at a hospital after being shot in the head.

Witnesses reported that Eygi was participating in a pro-Palestinian protest against the expansion of an Israeli settlement into Beita, a Palestinian town north of Ramallah in the West Bank.

Settlement expansions are frequently causes of conflict between the Israeli military and Palestinians.

The Israeli military has been targeting Palestinian militant camps in the West Bank cities of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Al-Faraa over the past week.

These cities have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967.

On Sept. 6, it was reported that Israeli forces withdrew from Jenin after military raids that lasted for more than a week.

The war began after Hamas terrorists conducted a surprise attack on Israel on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 250 more as hostages. Hamas first launched rockets and then sent ground forces.

Calls for Cease-Fire

On Sept. 1, protests erupted in Israel after six more Israeli hostages were killed in Gaza.

The protesters demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas. Netanyahu has pledged “total victory,” including the elimination of Hamas.

Histadrut, Israel’s labor union, called for a general strike on the day of the protests to pressure the Israeli government to end the war and bring back hostages.

Among the six hostages who were killed was 23-year-old Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin from Berkley, California.

Goldberg-Polin’s parents said the Hamas propaganda video of him taken before he was killed, in which he criticized the Israeli government for attacking Gaza instead of calling for a cease-fire, should serve as a “wake-up call to the world.”

“No other family should go through what our family (and the families of the other recently executed hostages) have endured,” Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin wrote.

Joseph Lord and the Associated Press contributed to this report.