Aysenur Eygi, American Killed in the West Bank, Was a Campus Organizer

After a young Turkish American woman was fatally shot on Friday in the occupied West Bank while protesting an Israeli settler outpost, friends of hers in the United States said she would have wanted the world to recognize that such shootings are not uncommon.

The woman, Aysenur Eyzi Eygi, 26, was in Beita, a village in the West Bank, when she was shot in the head. It was not immediately clear who was responsible, but witnesses and Palestinian officials said Israeli soldiers had fired the shots that killed her.

Ms. Egyi’s death added to the rising toll in the West Bank since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel ignited a war in Gaza. According to the United Nations, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 600 people in the West Bank since the war began.

The trip to the West Bank was Ms. Eygi’s latest effort in years of activism that began nearly a decade ago when was still a teenager and joined rallies against the construction of an oil pipeline through the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota.

Last spring, Ms. Eygi, who was born in Turkey and raised in Washington State, had been an organizer of protests against the Gaza War at the University of Washington, where she earned a degree in psychology, with a minor in Middle Eastern languages and cultures.

“Aysenur was so energetic, and incredibly passionate about justice,” said Juliette Majid, an activist who was friends with Ms. Eygi. “Her loss is felt profoundly.”

Ms. Majid described Ms. Eygi as “an amazing organizer” with lots of contacts. She coordinated much of the programming at the antiwar encampment, organizing teach-ins and communicating with various student groups, Ms. Majid said. “She was very plugged in” and “the heart of so much of what we did,” Ms. Majid said.

Ms. Majid said Ms. Eygi would have wanted to emphasize that her death was only one of many stemming from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On campus, during discussions at the encampment, Ms. Eygi was “always reminding us that this was the Palestinian story,” Ms. Majid said. “She grounded us.”

Ms. Eygi was an experienced protester who was not naïve about the danger of demonstrating in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “I think she knew the risks going in,” Ms. Majid said.

Ms. Eygi had messaged Ms. Majid on Monday, the day before she arrived in the West Bank. She had designated Ms. Majid as her media contact while she was on the trip. “I never thought I’d be having these conversations,” Ms. Majid added tearfully.

Ana Mari Cauce, the president of University of Washington, said in a statement on Friday that Ms. Eygi had been a peer mentor “who helped welcome new students” and “provided a positive influence in their lives.” Ms. Cauce called for a cease-fire and a “resolution to the crisis” in the Middle East.

Saif Sharabati, 20, a Palestinian American born in Seattle and raised in the West Bank, also met Ms. Eygi at the university campus encampment in early May. They quickly became very close friends, he said.

“She’s very honest, so sweet,” Mr. Sharabati added. “She cares about others a lot and when she does things, she does things from her heart.”

The two friends had shared many dinners and long conversations in a few short months, he said, because Ms. Eygi had been so curious about life in the West Bank. “I lived the occupation,” he said. “I know how hard it is. She was very interested.”

Mr. Sharabati said that Ms. Eygi had spoken to him for a long time on the phone a few hours before the protest where she died. She seemed to him to be reeling from the grim reality of life in the West Bank, which she was experiencing firsthand for the first time, despite her deep interest in the Palestinian cause. “We talked for two hours about the situation, about what she saw,” he said.

According to Mr. Sharabati, Ms. Eygi was shocked by all the checkpoints and obstacles that Palestinians face and recounted how she had been turned away on a visit to Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem.

He said that she had vowed that when she returned to the United States, she would ensure people knew about the plight of Palestinians. “These were her last thoughts,” he said. “She said all she wanted was to get the message out that this has to stop.”

Ms. Eygi’s uncle, Cemal Birden, said her family had moved from Antalya, on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast, to the United States when she was less than a year old. Her parents, Rabiye Eygi and Mehmet Suat Eygi, settled in Seattle, though the family maintained ties to relatives in Turkey, the Turkish foreign ministry said.

Mr. Birden said he had tried to warn Ms. Eygi that going to Jerusalem was too dangerous. “My niece was such a pure, such a good kid,” said Mr. Birden in a telephone interview.

On Friday, Ms. Eygi joined the rally in Beita, a village near Nablus where residents have been protesting for years — sometimes violently — against an Israeli settler outpost on lands that were part of the Palestinian village. The Israeli government had recently said it would legalize the Israeli outpost.

The demonstrations around Beita began well before the current war between Israel and Hamas. Israeli settlers took over a nearby hilltop in 2021, erecting an outpost known as Evyatar on land claimed by the village. That prompted months of deadly protests in which several residents of Beita were killed and scores wounded.

Ms. Eygi was there as part of the International Solidarity Movement, a nonviolent group resisting Israeli occupation. Ms. Majid, who had difficulty speaking as she recalled Ms. Eygi, called her friend’s death “incredibly devastating” but said that Ms. Eygi would have wanted every Palestinian casualty in Gaza and the West Bank to receive as much attention.