Israeli Soldiers Shoot, Kill American Woman During West Bank Protest: Witness

Nablus:  Israeli soldiers killed an American woman participating in an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank on Friday, another protester who witnessed the shooting told The Associated Press. Two doctors said she was shot in the head.

US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed the death of the 26-year-old woman but did not say whether she had been shot by Israeli troops. He said the US was gathering more information about the circumstances of her death and would have “more to say.” He and the doctors who treated her released the woman's name, but the activist organisation she was volunteering with, the International Solidarity Movement, said her family had asked she not be identified.

The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area of the protest.

The woman who was fatally shot was attending a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion, protests that have grown violent in the past: A month ago, American citizen Amado Sison was shot in the leg by Israeli forces, he said, as he tried to flee tear gas and live fire.

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who was also participating in the protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a communal prayer on a hillside outside the northern West Bank town of Beita overlooking the Israeli settlement of Evyatar.

Soldiers surrounded the prayer, and clashes soon broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing tear gas and live ammunition, Pollak said.

The protesters and activists, including Pollak and the woman, retreated from the hill and the clashes subdued, he said. He then watched as two soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group's direction and shot at them. He saw the flares leave the nozzle of the gun when the shots rang out. He said the woman was about 10 or 15 metres behind him when the shots were fired.

He then saw her “lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death,” he said.

Two doctors said she had been shot in the head — Dr. Ward Basalat, who administered first aid at the scene and Dr. Fouad Naffa, director of Rafidia Hospital in the nearby city of Nablus where she was taken.

“We tried to save the American citizen, we tried to revive the heart for several stages, but unfortunately, we did not succeed in restoring the heart to function,” Naffa told The AP, adding that she had severe bone fragmentation and damage to brain tissue.

Palestinian officials said the killing reflected how Israel has intensified its repression of Palestinian protests in the territory since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Israeli forces rarely use live ammunition to put down protests inside Israel. But in the West Bank, Palestinian demonstrations are frequently met with live fire.

Nablus Governor Ghassan Daghals wrote on X that the “Israeli occupation wanted to kill for the sake of killing." “A war of extermination in Gaza and a war in the West Bank that eats everything green,” he wrote. “It does not spare a child or any nationality.” Hussein Al-Sheikh, the secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, wrote on X that the killing marked “another crime added to the series of crimes committed daily by the occupation forces." Settlements are overwhelmingly viewed by the international community as illegal under international law.

The settlement of Evyatar was initially an outpost unrecognized under Israeli law but was legalized by the Israeli cabinet last month, in a move the far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said was in response to recognition of Palestinian statehood by a number of countries.

Israeli fire has killed over 690 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, Palestinian health officials say. In that time, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis in the territory have also increased. (AP) GRS GRS