‘Our job was to protect each other’: the Australian woman who saw a fellow volunteer shot dead by Israeli forces

‘We were novices’ … Gold Coast social worker Helen O’Sullivan shepherding with a donkey on a Palestinian farm in the West Bank. Photograph: Helen O’Sullivan

Beneath the shade of an olive tree, Helen O’Sullivan and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi found a moment of calm.

There, in the grove away from the road where minutes ago teargas was shot at Palestinian boys and international volunteers, the pair tried to catch their breath.