Читать книгу Blessed Peacemakers - Robin Jarrell - Страница 79

10 April 1979—16 March 2003

Shielding Dignity

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one common tactic of the Israeli army, whose official name is Israel Defense Forces or IDF, is house demolition. Called a counterinsurgency security measure by its defenders, critics argue that it’s often an excuse to seize territory for Israeli settlers. The demolitions are carried out by armor-plated bulldozers that the military for some reason calls doobis, or “teddy bears.” The heavily screened windows of these huge vehicles protect their drivers from sniper bullets and shrapnel, but also limit their range of vision.

On 16 March 2003, one of these bulldozers ran over and crushed Rachel Corrie, a young American member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organization dedicated to nonviolent direct action in defense of West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians. In a typical ISM action, volunteers stand as human shields between IDF doobis and Palestinian buildings earmarked for demolition. The hope is that their presence will inhibit the destruction of homes and the displacement of families, or at least draw international media attention to it. People from around the world travel to Israel to participate in ISM actions.

Rachel Corrie was one of them. A native of Washington State, she decided to delay her graduation from Evergreen State College to volunteer for a while with ISM. After arriving in Israel in early 2003, in the third and especially violent year of the Second Intifada, she was sent to the Gaza Strip city of Rafah, home to seventy thousand Palestinians. Corrie’s initial assignment was guarding the Canada Well (so-called because of its funding source), which had been heavily damaged by IDF bulldozers. Rafah municipal workers trying to repair the well, which supplied upwards of 50 percent of the city’s water, were regularly fired on by Israeli troops. While protecting it, Corrie reported that bullets hit the ground so close to workers and volunteers that bits of debris hit their faces.

On the day of her death, Corrie and six other ISM volunteers where shielding a number of Palestinian homes in Rafah that the Israeli military claimed were guerrilla hideouts. Reports differ about exactly what happened. Some say that the bulldozer operator, angered at an insurgent grenade that had exploded nearby, deliberately ran over her. Others say that she was in his blind spot. What’s certain is that Corrie was hit by the vehicle and crushed to death as she stood or knelt as a human shield.

In an e-mail message to her mother written two weeks before her death, Corrie confessed to occasional moments of fear and despair at the violence surrounding her. But she also spoke of finding inspiration from the Palestinians. Through them, she said, “I am discovering a degree of strength and the basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances—which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity.”