By Susan Heavey and Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday called the Israeli military’s killing of an American activist in the Israeli-occupied West Bank “unacceptable” and said Israel must do more to make sure it never happens again.
Israel has taken responsibility for the death of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who was killed while taking part in a protest against settlement expansion in the West Bank. Biden said the U.S. government expects continued access to the criminal investigation into the shooting.
“There must be full accountability. And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again,” Biden said in a statement.
Harris said in a separate statement that no one should be killed for participating in a peaceful protest.
“The shooting that led to her death is unacceptable and raises legitimate questions about the conduct of IDF (Israel Defense Forces) personnel in the West Bank,” she said.
Eygi, who is also a Turkish national, was shot dead on Friday at a protest march in Beita, a village near Nablus where Palestinians have been repeatedly attacked by far-right Jewish settlers. Israel has said her death was accidental.
Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River, an area Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state. Israel has built a thickening array of settlements there that most countries deem illegal. Israel disputes that assertion, citing historical and biblical ties to the territory.
The International Court of Justice said in July that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and settlements there were illegal and should be ended as soon as possible
Eygi’s relatives called on Biden and Harris to speak to the family directly and order an independent investigation into her shooting.
To call her death an accident “is complicity in the Israeli military’s agenda to take Palestinian land and whitewash the killing of an American. … Let us be clear, an American citizen was killed by a foreign military in a targeted attack,” the family said in a statement.
Democratic U.S. Senator Patty Murray and Representative Pramila Jayapal wrote a letter to Biden on Wednesday and requested “an immediate, transparent, credible and thorough” independent U.S. investigation.
Biden also decried the ongoing violence in the West Bank by “extremist Israeli settlers” and “Palestinian terrorists,” one day after top U.S. officials demanded an overhaul of Israeli military conduct in the occupied West Bank.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Kanishka Singh; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Timothy Heritage, Cynthia Osterman and Edwina Gibbs)
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