The following statement was issued by Hamas on Sept. 6, 2024, on Resistance News Network.
The Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas — condemns in the strongest terms the crime committed by the Zionist occupation army in targeting the U.S. solidarity activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi with a direct bullet to the head, which led to her martyrdom, while she was participating in the weekly peaceful march against settlements on Jabal Sbeih in the town of Beita, south of Nablus [in the West Bank].
We consider this heinous crime an extension of the occupation’s deliberate crimes against foreign solidarity activists with our Palestinian people, which have claimed the lives of dozens of them, perhaps the most prominent of whom is the solidarity activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed under the tracks of the occupation’s tanks in 2003.
These crimes continue in the West Bank with systematic and continuous attacks on solidarity activists by the occupation army and its settler gangs, as happens in all peaceful solidarity events and marches in the villages and towns of the West Bank threatened by settlement and Judaization projects.
The Zionist extremist government and its terrorist army seek, through these crimes, to terrorize and suppress every voice calling for the freedom of our Palestinian people, or standing in solidarity with them in light of criminal settlement, Judaization projects and an ongoing comprehensive genocide war waged against them, without the official world moving a finger to stop it.
We call on the international community, the United Nations, and all its political, humanitarian, human rights and judicial institutions to act immediately to rein in the occupation government and hold it accountable for its fascist behavior that denies all international laws.
We also call on the U.S. administration to review its biased policy and support for the crimes and massacres of the occupation against our Palestinian people, which today led to the killing of a U.S. citizen by the bullets of its criminal army.
This statement has been lightly edited.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American activist, shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, holds a banner during her graduation from the University of Washington, two months ago, where she was an active participant in pro-Palestinian efforts.
Credit: Sam Levin