Israeli forces mischaracterised events leading to fatal shooting of US activist, says Washington Post

Andrew Roth

Israeli security forces mischaracterised the events that led up to the fatal shooting of a Turkish-American protester in the West Bank, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.

The Israel Defense Forces claimed that their soldiers were targeting the leader of a violent protest when they shot Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old member of the International Solidarity Movement who had come from her native Washington state to Israel to protest against settlements in the West Bank.

In a statement, Joe Biden cited evidence provided in the IDF’s initial inquiry, saying the “preliminary investigation has indicated that it was the result of a tragic error resulting from an unnecessary escalation”. The US president also told reporters that Eygi was killed probably as the result of a bullet ricochet, and “apparently it was an accident”.

But a Washington Post report said that protests had subsided before Israeli forces opened fire, indicating that there was no immediate threat to the soldiers and little justification to target Eygi or any other protesters with live fire.

According to the investigation, Eygi was “shot more than a half-hour after the height of confrontations in Beita, and some 20 minutes after protesters had moved down the main road – more than 200 yards (183 metres) away from Israeli forces”.

The potential target, a Palestinian teenager who was wounded by Israeli fire, was standing about 18 metres away from Eygi, witnesses told the Post.

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It has gone 9am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.

The body of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the US-Turkish citizen who was killed by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank last week, is due to arrive in Turkey on Friday, the foreign ministry has said, a day after Ankara said it would open an investigation into her killing and request international arrest warrants.

Her father said the funeral was set for Saturday in the Turkish Aegean coastal city of Didim.

Israel has said it was highly likely its troops had fired the shot that killed Ezgi Eygi, who was killed last Friday while taking part in a protest against Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, but said it was an accident.

Justice minister Yilmaz Tunç said the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office is investigating “those responsible for the martyrdom and murder of our sister Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi”.

He told reporters that Turkey had evidence regarding the killing and would make international arrest requests.

The foreign ministry said she “was deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli soldiers during a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians”.“We will make every effort to ensure that this crime does not go unpunished,” it said.

US president Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris said on Wednesday that her killing was unacceptable and Israel must do more to make sure such an event never happens again. However, they have not ordered an independent investigation despite requests from her family.

Mehmet Suat Eygi, Ezgi Eygi’s father, told reporters he welcomed Turkey’s investigation into the murder and said he expected the same from the US government.

“When there is an injustice against one of its own, or a murder of its own citizens, America, like the eagle on its emblem, swoops down. But when it comes to Israel, there is an effort to evade it,” Turkish media cited him as saying. Eygi added that his daughter was 10 months old when she moved to the US.

In other developments:

• The US Department of State has said it will unconditionally release $1.3bn in military aid to Egypt, despite criticising its government in the past over alleged human rights abuses. Last year, the US had made the release of part of this annual aid conditional on progress being made on respecting human rights in Egypt, a country where ruler Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been accused of suppressing dissent. This year, however, the state department said Egypt had made “progress” in certain areas of human rights. It also explicitly mentioned Cairo’s help in mediating between Israel and Hamas on the war in Gaza.

• Relief groups have said more than 1 million people in Gaza will not have enough food this month, while trucks loaded with fresh vegetables or meat spoil waiting to cross Israeli checkpoints, and thousands of aid packages of food, medical supplies and even toothbrushes and shampoo remain stuck in a backlog of lorries unable to enter from Egypt. A report published in late August by more than two dozen NGOs, including Mercy Corps, Oxfam and Anera, said that among the most “significant obstacles” were the delays imposed by the Israeli authorities in approving cargo to enter Gaza.

• Israeli security forces mischaracterised the events that led up to the fatal shooting of a Turkish-American protester in the West Bank, according to an investigation by the Washington Post. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that their soldiers were targeting the leader of a violent protest when they shot Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. But a Washington Post report said that protests had subsided before Israeli forces opened fire, indicating that there was no immediate threat to the soldiers and little justification to target Eygi or any other protesters with live fire.

• The World Health Organization (WHO) said at least one quarter, or about 22,500, of those Palestinians injured by Israel’s bombardment in the Gaza conflict had suffered life-changing injuries, such as missing limbs that would require rehabilitation services for years to come. WHO said that on Wednesday it evacuated nearly 100 people from Gaza to the UAE for medical reasons, the largest such operation so far of the war.

• Israel has bombed a UN school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza, killing at least 18 people, including the shelter manager and five other Unrwa staff. The al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat is home to about 12,000 displaced people, mostly women and children, the UN said. It has been hit five times since the start of the war in Gaza.

• Israel’s government press office (GPO) has announced it is revoking the press cards of all Al Jazeera journalists working in Israel. Nitzan Chen, the director of the GPO, claimed the network constitutes “a threat to IDF soldiers”.

• Yossi Sarel, the head of the IDF’s unit 8200, a prestigious IDF intelligence unit, has announced that he is to resign. In his statement he said on 7 October last year “I failed my mission”. In April this year the Guardian revealed that Sariel left his identity exposed online when he secretly authored a book published in 2021.

• The IDF have launched an investigation into claims in the Israeli media that the London-based Jewish Chronicle published stories based on “fabricated intelligence” relating to Hamas, amid claims that they may have been planted as part of a disinformation campaign.