[2358] in peace2
Rachel Corrie in her own words
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Zaki Wahhaj)
Mon Mar 17 21:53:02 2003
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Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 21:55:50 -0500
To: peace-announce@mit.edu
From: Zaki Wahhaj <zwahhaj@MIT.EDU>
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The following is a brief statement by Rachel Corrie's parents followed by
an essay she wrote during her time in Rafah.
Statement March 16, 2003
Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie
We are now in a period of grieving and still finding out the details
behind the death of Rachel in the Gaza Strip.
We have raised all our children to appreciate the beauty of the global
community and family and are proud that Rachel was able to live her
convictions. Rachel was filled with love and a sense of duty to her fellow
man, wherever they lived. And, she gave her life trying to protect those
that are unable to protect themselves.
Rachel wrote to us from the Gaza Strip and we would like to release to the
media her experience in her own words at this time.
Thank you.
Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel Corrie to her family on February 7, 2003.
I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have
very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to
think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the
United States--something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't
know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell
holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them
constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely
sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not
like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli
tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name
to me, “Ali”--or point at the posters of him on the walls. The
children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me
"Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" and they laugh when I say "Bush Majnoon"
"Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited Arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush?
Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I
believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: Bush mish
Majnoon... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say "Bush is a
tool", but I don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are
eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power
structure than I was just a few years ago--at least regarding Israel.
Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of reading, attendance
at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared
me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless
you see it, and even then you are always well aware that your experience is
not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would
face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have
money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact
that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot,
driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a
major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the
ocean. Ostensibly it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months
or years on end without a trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as
opposed to so many others). When I leave for school or work I can be
relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting
half way between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint—a soldier
with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I
can get home again when I'm done. So, if I feel outrage at arriving and
entering briefly and incompletely into the world in which these children
exist, I wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my
world.
They know that children in the United States don't usually have their
parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once
you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken
for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have
spent an evening when you haven’t wondered if the walls of your home
might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once you’ve
met people who have never lost anyone-- once you have experienced the
reality of a world that isn't surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed
"settlements" and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the
world for all the years of your childhood spent existing--just existing--in
resistance to the constant stranglehold of the world’s fourth largest
military--backed by the world’s only superpower--in it’s attempt to
erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these
children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew.
As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah, a city of about
140,000 people, approximately 60 percent of whom are refugees--many of whom
are twice or three times refugees. Rafah existed prior to 1948, but most
of the people here are themselves or are descendants of people who were
relocated here from their homes in historic Palestine--now Israel. Rafah
was split in half when the Sinai returned to Egypt. Currently, the Israeli
army is building a fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine and
the border, carving a no-mans land from the houses along the border. Six
hundred and two homes have been completely bulldozed according to the Rafah
Popular Refugee Committee. The number of homes that have been partially
destroyed is greater.
Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian
soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, "Go! Go!" because
a tank was coming. Followed by waving and "what's your name?". There is
something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how
much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids: Egyptian
kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of
tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind
walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of
tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, occasionally
shouting-- and also occasionally waving--many forced to be here, many just
aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander away.
In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in the
western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, there are
more IDF towers here than I can count--along the horizon,at the end of
streets. Some just army green metal. Others these strange spiral
staircases draped in some kind of netting to make the activity within
anonymous. Some hidden,just beneath the horizon of buildings. A new one
went up the other day in the time it took us to do laundry and to cross
town twice to hang banners. Despite the fact that some of the areas
nearest the border are the original Rafah with families who have lived on
this land for at least a century, only the 1948 camps in the center of the
city are Palestinian controlled areas under Oslo. But as far as I can
tell, there are few if any places that are not within the sights of some
tower or another. Certainly there is no place invulnerable to apache
helicopters or to the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over the
city for hours at a time.
I've been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but
I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal
of concern here about the "reoccupation of Gaza." Gaza is reoccupied every
day to various extents, but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter
all the streets and remain here, instead of entering some of the streets
and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the
edges of the communities. If people aren't already thinking about the
consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope
they will start.
I also hope you'll come here. We've been wavering between five and six
internationals. The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of
presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam, Brazil, Block J, Zorob, and
Block O. There is also need for constant night-time presence at a well on
the outskirts of Rafah since the Israeli army destroyed the two largest
wells. According to the municipal water office the wells destroyed last
week provided half of Rafah’s water supply. Many of the communities have
requested internationals to be present at night to attempt to shield houses
from further demolition. After about ten p.m. it is very difficult to move
at night because the Israeli army treats anyone in the streets as
resistance and shoots at them. So clearly we are too few.
I continue to believe that my home, Olympia, could gain a lot and offer a
lot by deciding to make a commitment to Rafah in the form of a
sister-community relationship. Some teachers and children's groups have
expressed interest in e-mail exchanges, but this is only the tip of the
iceberg of solidarity work that might be done. Many people want their
voices to be heard, and I think we need to use some of our privilege as
internationals to get those voices heard directly in the US, rather than
through the filter of well-meaning internationals such as myself. I am
just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage,
about the ability of people to organize against all odds, and to resist
against all odds.
Thanks for the news I've been getting from friends in the US. I just read
a report back from a friend who organized a peace group in Shelton,
Washington, and was able to be part of a delegation to the large January
18th protest in Washington DC. People here watch the media, and they told
me again today that there have been large protests in the United States and
"problems for the government" in the UK. So thanks for allowing me to not
feel like a complete polyanna when I tentatively tell people here that many
people in the United States do not support the policies of our government,
and that we are learning from global examples how to resist.
=======================================
Michael
ISM Media Coordinator
Beit Sahour
Occupied Palestine
Phone: +972-2-2774602
Cell: +972-67-862 439
web: http://www.palsolidarity.org
