West Bank residents report tear gas and gunfire before US woman dies | West Bank

US officials have insisted that a ceasefire in Gaza is near, even as fighting rages unabated in the sealed-off Palestinian territories and violence escalates in the occupied West Bank, where witnesses observer A man with American-Turkish citizenship was killed by Israeli forces on Friday.

William Burns, who is also the chief US negotiator in the indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, echoed Secretary of State Antony Blinken's statement in a speech in London on Saturday, saying: “90 percent of the text has been agreed, but the last 10 percent is always the most difficult.”

But pressure from the United States, Israel's main ally, and the two mediators talking to Hamas, Qatar and Egypt have done nothing to calm the fighting in Gaza or to alleviate rising tensions in the West Bank.

The US has also said it is urgently seeking more information about the killing of 26-year-old Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. According to witnesses, she was shot in the head by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers during an anti-settlement demonstration in the West Bank on Friday. Several of Israel's Western allies, including the US, have recently imposed sanctions on individuals and organizations linked to the Israeli settler movement, despite opposition from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, which includes far-right supporters of Israeli extremism in the West Bank.

Eygi's family called for an independent investigation into her killing, increasing pressure on the Biden administration to end what critics say is American complicity in the Israeli occupation.

On Saturday, Israeli soldiers, including what appeared to be forensic experts, visited the town of Beita near Nablus to examine the crime scene where Eygi was killed. For residents, it was yet another case of the Israeli military investigating itself: About 1% of army investigations result in prosecutions, according to human rights groups.

All residents of Beita observer The people they spoke to gave a very similar description of the shooting. A group of demonstrators had gathered on the hillside for midday prayers, as they have done every Friday for the past few years, to protest against Eyvatar, an Israeli settlement on the next hill built on land owned by Palestinian farmers.

On this occasion, about 20 Palestinians from Beita, 10 foreign volunteers from the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement, including Eygi, and about a dozen children from the district were present.

“The children were throwing stones here at the intersection and the soldiers fired tear gas at them,” said Mahmud Abdullah, a 43-year-old local resident. “Everyone scattered and ran into the olive grove and then two shots rang out.” One of the bullets hit something along the way and a piece of shrapnel hit a protester in the stomach, slightly wounding him, the witnesses said. The other bullet hit Eygi in the head and pierced her skull. Neighbors showed both the location where Eygi was shot and where the bullet came from: a house on a ridge.

The owner, Ali Mohali, said a group of soldiers, about half a dozen, went to his roof, 200m from where Eygi was shot. He said he heard one shot but was not sure if there was a second one from that position.

The IDF's statement on the incident said it was currently investigating a report that soldiers killed a foreign national when they shot at “an instigator of violent activities who threw stones at the troops and posed a threat to them.”

Moneer Khdeir, Mohali's 65-year-old neighbor, expressed disdain for the IDF's report. “They said the stones posed a threat to the soldiers. They were stones thrown by children from down there, and yet they talk about it as if it were a Yassin [rocket propelled grenade]”, Khdeir scoffed.

Throughout the West Bank, the ground forces are increasingly viewed by Palestinians as a military arm of the settlers, aligned with the far-right elements of Netanyahu's government. Palestinian politicians and human rights groups have long accused the Israeli army of standing idly by or even participating in settler attacks.

Hisham Dweikat, 57, a science professor from Beita, said Eygi was the 15th person killed in protests against Eyvatar in the three years since the settlement was reoccupied, but her killing was the first that the Israeli army had investigated. He did not have much confidence in the outcome. “It is clear that the army is on the side of the settlers,” he said.

Fifteen kilometers south of Beita in the village of Qaryut, Amjad Bakr and his family buried his 12-year-old daughter Bana on Saturday afternoon. She was shot when she opened the window in her bedroom. At about the same time on Friday, Eygi was killed in Beita.

“As usual, settlers came to raid the city on Friday and the people in the city went to defend themselves. A confrontation ensued and the army came,” said 47-year-old Bakr.

“We went home because we thought if the army was here, maybe they could stop the settlers. But unfortunately the army did not stop the settlers. They are on the side of the settlers,” he said.

“The bullet that hit my daughter came through the window and hit her right in the heart,” he said. “She was innocent, shy and smart. She had memorized three passages of the Holy Quran.”

When asked what Bana planned to do with her life, Bakr shrugged: “An Israeli bullet doesn’t care about the future of any Palestinian.”

In a statement, the Israeli army said soldiers were deployed to break up a violent clash between dozens of Palestinians and Israelis and fired shots in the air. “A report has been received of a Palestinian girl killed by gunfire in the area. The incident is currently under investigation,” it said.

Since the October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 662 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between militant and civilian casualties. The figure is almost five times higher than the 146 deaths in 2022, which already set a nearly 20-year record.

At least 23 Israelis, including security forces, were killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, Israeli officials said. In Gaza, another 61 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes across the entire territory in the past 48 hours, the Hamas-controlled territory's health ministry said, bringing the death toll to 40,939. The October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war killed around 1,200 Israelis and other citizens, according to Israeli figures.

The latest round of ceasefire talks has stalled because Netanyahu insists that Israeli troops will not withdraw from the Gaza-Egypt border – a dealbreaker for Hamas – despite agreeing to the measure in talks in July.

Tensions between Israel and its regional enemies – Iran and the powerful Lebanese militia Hezbollah – have brought the Middle East to the brink of regional war several times in the past eleven months.