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The Death of a Peace Angel On
March 16, Rachel Corey, a 23 year old student from Olympia, USA was killed by
the Israeli army when a bulldozer drove over her as she stood protesting a house
demolition in Rafah, Gaza Strip. She
was one of six International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteers who have been
staying in the city to provide international civilian protection to families at
risk from the various forms of violence of the Israeli occupation.
Rachel
(or ‘Racha’ as she was known to the many many Palestinians who had become
her friends since she arrived in Rafah in late January) had spent most of the
afternoon with the other ISM volunteers patrolling a small stretch of the border
area where dozens of homes have been demolished in recent weeks and months.
The group had been clearly, audibly and visibly following the tanks and
bulldozers up and down this strip for three hours, using banners and megaphones
to alert the soldiers to their presence, a strategy that has been employed
uniformly since the start of the ISM presence in this region last December.
Occasionally
the bulldozer drivers waved to the protesters.
At
around 5pm the army bulldozers moved towards this house.
Rachel was the first of the international group to arrive in front of the
house. She stood on top of a mound
of earth, wearing a bright orange jacket and waved to the bulldozer driver,
shouting at him to stop. He
didn’t. The group report that the
driver tipped sand over her, at which point she fell down.
He then drove the machine over her while the rest of the group screamed
at him to stop. After crushing her body with the forward motion of the vehicle,
he then reversed. During this time the group heard her scream.
She didn’t die at the scene. With
Rachel crying ‘My back is broken’, the other internationals waited at the
scene for an ambulance to arrive. The
owner of the house in question attempted to give Rachel first aid, but said that
her skull was too damaged for it to be effective.
She was dead on arrival to the hospital in Rafah, where her activist
colleagues stood numbed with shock at the sight of her disfigured body. The
house that Rachel was killed defending is a house that internationals have been
staying in frequently over the past three months. These houses are NOT homes of
suspected militants. They are
simply houses close to the Israeli controlled border with Egypt, the sight of a
proposed concrete wall and ‘buffer zone’, similar to the Apartheid Wall now
under construction around the West Bank. Rachel
Corey was the first International Solidarity Movement volunteer to be killed in
this intifada. Over 2,200
Palestinians have been killed by the state of Israel since September 2000.
Shot, bombed, crushed in their homes, left to die in ambulances at
checkpoints. The instruments and policies of occupation and murder are numerous.
Israelli
random killings and house demolitions are part of the systematic violence that
is an everyday reality for Palestinians. Today
that violence became a reality for internationals. The
rationale of international protection rests upon the assumption that Israel
cannot remain unaccountable for the killing of international civilians as it is
unaccountable for the killing of Palestinians.
Today this assumption has been challenged.
An
activist for justice and for peace, Rachel joins the list of history’s
martyrs, who through non-violent protest have been struck down by the forces of
oppression and military power that we will continue to struggle against until
Palestine is free.
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