Family of American woman killed in West Bank expresses frustration after Blinken meeting

By Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN) — The family of an American woman killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank said they left a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken frustrated and with little hope anyone would be held accountable for her death.

“Nothing left us optimistic about justice for my sister moving forward,” Ozden Bennett, the sister of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, said after the meeting at the US State Department Monday.

Eygi was shot and killed in early September while participating in a weekly protest against an Israeli settlement near the Palestinian village of Beita. The 26-year-old, who was born in Turkey and is a Turkish American dual national, was a recent graduate of the University of Washington. She had been volunteering with the same pro-Palestinian activist group as Rachel Corrie, a US citizen killed in 2003 while attempting to stop an Israeli bulldozer from demolishing Palestinian homes in Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in the days following Eygi’s killing that it was “highly likely” that she was “hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire.” Blinken at the time said Eygi’s killing was “unprovoked and unjustified” and demanded changes to the rules of engagement of Israel forces operating in the West Bank.

Hamid Ali, Eygi’s husband, said the family wanted to sit down face-to-face with Blinken “to be able to share what our experience has been, what our grief has been, and what our frustrations have been and what our expectations are.”

Blinken was “attentive in listening to us,” but “unfortunately repeated a lot of the same things that we’ve been hearing for the past 20 years, particularly since Rachel Corrie’s killing,” he said.

Blinken told them the US would “be in touch with the Israeli military and officials about changes in conduct, which we know from Rachel Corrie’s case, Shireen Abu Akleh’s case has not led to anything substantial or any kind of positive changes to prevent incidents like my sister’s killing from occurring again,” her sister said.

The family has demanded the US government to launch an independent investigation and repeated that in their meeting with Blinken, but they said the top US diplomat reiterated that the US would wait for the Israeli government to wrap up its own investigation. The family also called for Blinken to publicly pressure Israel to finish that probe before the Biden administration leaves office.

Blinken “was very deferential to the Israelis in this in this case,” Ali said. “The best that I heard him promise was to speak to them again, publicly maybe or privately, just to ask them to get on with your investigation or expedite it before he leaves office.”

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Blinken “offered, once again, his deepest condolences to the family.”

“He told them that Israel has told us in recent days that they are finalizing their investigation into the matter, and he committed to them that as soon as we learn anything about the results of that investigation, we will report it to them,” Miller said Monday.

Miller also said that it is the Department of Justice, not the State Department, that would need to launch an investigation into Eygi’s death.

“I can’t speak on behalf of an independent law enforcement agency as to what they may be doing or what they might do or might not do,” he said at a press briefing.

Eygi’s husband said that change to the Trump administration should not matter to efforts to seek accountability for her killing.

“For us, this isn’t a partisan issue. An American was killed abroad, and we hope any American government, any administration, would take that seriously and pursue justice,” Ali said.

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