(Fwd) "I am allowed to go see the ocean" Rachel Corrie to her family

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

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     Gush Shalom
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International release, March 17, 2003

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"I am allowed to go see the ocean" 
Rachel Corrie wrote to her family  
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[We forward the sad but courageous statement of the parents of Rachel 
Corrie, followed by a moving  "letter from Palestine" which she sent them 
on Feb. 7, 2003, two weeks after her arrival in the Gaza Strip.]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Mon, 17 Mar 2003 01:27:48 +0000 (GMT)
From:           	ism rafah <ismrafah at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject:        	Statement from Rachel Corrie's parents

March 16, 2003

"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.
Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie

--
Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel 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.