About Rachel Corrie
Rachel Aliene Corrie (April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003) was an American nonviolence activist and diarist. She was a member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and was active throughout the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. In 2003, she was in Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip under Israeli occupation, where the demolishment of Palestinian houses by Israeli forces was taking place at the height of the Second Intifada. While protesting the demolitions as they were being carried out, she was killed by an Israeli driving an armored bulldozer that crushed her. Corrie was born in Olympia, Washington, in 1979. After graduating from Capital High School, she went on to attend Evergreen State College. She took a year off from her studies to work as a volunteer in the Washington State Conservation Corps, where she spent three years making weekly visits to mental patients. While at Evergreen State College, she became a "committed peace activist", arranging peace events through a local group called "Olympians for Peace and Solidarity". She later joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) organization in order to protest the policies of the Israeli army in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Corrie went to Gaza as part of her college's senior-year independent-study proposal to connect Olympia and Rafah with each other as sister cities. While in Rafah on March 16, 2003, she joined other ISM activists in efforts to nonviolently prevent Israel's demolition of Palestinian property, where she was killed by an Israeli bulldozer that crushed her. Corrie's death sparked controversy and led to international media coverage. Physicians present and fellow ISM activists stated that Corrie had been wearing a high-visibility vest and was deliberately driven over, while the Israeli army said that it was an accident because the bulldozer operator did not see her. Following the incident, an Israeli military investigation concluded that Corrie's death was the result of an accident and that the bulldozer operator had limited visibility. The ruling attracted criticism from organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), B'Tselem, and Yesh Din. HRW stated that the ruling represented a pattern of impunity for Israeli forces. In 2012, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro stated that the Israeli investigation was unsatisfactory, lacking thoroughness, credibility and transparency, and that therefore the U.S. government was unsatisfied with the investigation's closure. Yasser Arafat, the first president of the Palestinian Authority, offered his condolences and gave the "blessings of the Palestinian people" to Corrie, promising to name a street in Gaza after her. On Corrie's first night there, she and two other ISM members set up camp inside Block J, which the ISM described as "a densely populated neighborhood along the Pink Line and frequent target of gunfire from an Israeli watchtower".
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