Shame on Sharon

Rachel Corrie's death remains unjustified before law or world opinion. It can never be justified, writes Steve Niva*

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A year has passed since Rachel Corrie, a 23- year-old American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while nonviolently trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian house in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. During this time, the Israeli government has strenuously sought to obscure the circumstances of Rachel's death. It refused to release its June 2003 military police investigation report to the United States and continues to claim that her death was an "unfortunate accident".

This despite testimony of six eyewitnesses who claim that Rachel was clearly visible to the bulldozer drivers with her bright red jacket and that it lifted her up and drove over her repeatedly with its plow down.

Unsatisfied with Israel's obstructionism, the Corrie family is urging Congress to pass House Concurrent Resolution 111 -- the Rachel Corrie Resolution -- which calls upon the "United States government to undertake a full, fair and expeditious investigation into the death of Rachel Corrie". Israel's supporters in the US Congress, however, have mobilised against it and it does not appear to have the support it needs to pass.

While questions remain about the details of Rachel's death, there should be no question about its ultimate cause. Rachel was killed by Israel's wall.

Palestinian homes in Rafah, including the one Rachel was killed defending, are being demolished daily by Israeli bulldozers to make way for a massive six-metre high steel wall with gun towers Israel is building along the Egyptian border with Rafah.

According to United Nations officials, over the past three years Israel has destroyed nearly 900 houses in Rafah in order to create a 100-metre "buffer zone" between Palestinian homes and the wall. Daily shelling and armed raids over the past three years have killed nearly 300 Palestinians and have left more than 8,600 people homeless. The British activist Tom Hurndall and BBC cameraman James Miller were also killed in Rafah last year near the wall. Rafah has become Israel's killing field, with more death and destruction per capita than any other city in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Israeli army's specious justification to the international community for the systematic degradation of Rafah has been the ongoing search for tunnels across the Egyptian border which it claims are used to bring weapons for Palestinian militants to kill Israeli civilians. Some Israeli apologists, including a vicious editorial in a recent edition of the right-wing Jerusalem Post, even claim that Rachel was knowingly defending these tunnels, thus facilitating suicide bombers.

While few dispute the existence of a small number of tunnels that funnel weapons to militants, Israeli claims about the need to destroy Rafah in order to find tunnels are little more than crude propaganda. Moreover, callous claims that Rachel was knowingly defending tunnels and suicide bombers illustrate the depths many Israeli sympathisers will plumb to defend the indefensible.

First, the Israeli army has never claimed that the home of Dr Samir Nasrallah, that Rachel was defending when she was killed, nor anyone's in this particular neighbourhood, concealed any tunnels or was a staging point for attacks on Israelis.

Second, any weapons that get through tunnels are only used in guerrilla actions against soldiers and settlers within the Gaza Strip, not against civilians within Israel. One of the main arguments Israeli officials use to justify building the barrier in the West Bank is the fact that no Palestinian suicide bombers have come from Gaza in the past three years.

Gaza is surrounded by a heavily monitored 52 kilometre electrified fence that keeps its 1.3 million impoverished Palestinians isolated from the world. Gaza is arguably the world's largest open- air prison, not a threat to Israeli civilians.

Third, the fact that Israel possesses ample equipment to discover and unearth these tunnels without resorting to widespread destruction and violence makes it clear that the ultimate goal of house demolitions in Rafah is to clear land for the wall. The governor of Rafah, Majid Ghal, rejects Israel's claims about tunnels as nonsense. "The Israelis have always said they do not want Palestine to control its borders or to have borders with other countries. They are trying to drive people out."

The Israeli army denies any such motive, but as The Guardian 's Chris McGreal reported on 27 October 2003, even the previous head of the Israeli Defence Force's (IDF) southern command for Gaza, Colonel Yom Tov Samya, has admitted that Israel's house demolitions policy was an end in itself. "The IDF has to knock down all the houses along a strip of 300 to 400 metres. It doesn't matter what the future settlement will be, this will be the border with Egypt."

The massive steel wall that killed Rachel is being built for one reason: to protect the security of the 7,000 Israeli settlers with green lawns and swimming pools who illegally occupy 30 per cent of Gaza's land. These settlements, along with dozens of military fortresses and Jewish- only bypass roads effectively divide Gaza into three sealed areas or ghettos, where a powerful army, with hundreds of tanks, attack helicopters and F-16s largely operates with impunity against the civilian population. The wall built on the border signals that Israel plans to retain most, if not all settlements.

While Israel has a right to defend itself against horrific and unjustifiable suicide bombings inside 1967 borders, it has no right to kill civilians and destroy homes in order to secure its illegal settlements inside occupied Palestinian land. Amnesty International stated in October 2003 that Israeli actions in Rafah constitute war crimes.

It is this massively unbalanced and destructive policy against civilians that compelled Rachel to go to Rafah in the first place. While engaged in local peace activism against the anticipated US invasion of Iraq, she was introduced to the prospect of going to Palestine by members of her community in Olympia, Washington, who had gone to Palestine as part of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). With mounting concerns that Israel may try to heighten its repressive policies against the Palestinians under the cover of war in Iraq, she felt compelled to undertake this journey herself. Once in Rafah, Rachel was drawn into direct action confrontations with the Israeli military as a result of the desperate circumstances in Rafah and her growing devotion to several families, including the family of Dr Nasrallah.

In addition to razing agricultural lands and terrorising the population through nightly raids and sniper fire, the Israeli army was also destroying electrical infrastructure and water wells. A journalist who met Rachel in Rafah remarked on how impressed he was with her effort to conduct research on the water situation for Palestinians in Gaza, where a mere 7,000 Israeli settlers use approximately more than 20 times the amount of water per capita than that allotted to 1.3 million Palestinians. She had been working with several Jewish-Israeli activists to research and publicise this issue when she was killed.

As we remember Rachel's life and the brutal circumstances in Rafah that led to her death, it is more urgent than ever to raise the call for an international protection force for the Palestinian people. Rachel and the many others who come to Palestine as part of the ISM are doing just this because of the failure of the international community to respond.

* The author The writer teaches international politics and Middle East studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia and worked with Rachel Corrie before she was killed.