He described how she first knelt in the path of an approaching bulldozer and then stood as it reached her. She climbed on a mound of earth and the crowd nearby shouted at the bulldozer to stop. He said the bulldozer pushed her down and drove over her.
Â
"They pushed Rachel, first beneath the scoop, then beneath the blade, then continued till her body was beneath the cockpit. They waited over her for a few seconds, before reversing. They reversed with the blade pressed down, so it scraped over her body a second time. Every second I believed they would stop but they never did."
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Rachel has been eulogized and demonized, celebrated and castigated. Her words
and witness speak for themselves and what follows are but a few excerpts from
her emails written while in the homes of strangers who became friends and
family in Rafah.
In January 2003, upon leaving Olympia,
Washington, Rachel wrote:
"We are all born and someday we'll all die too some degree alone. What if our
aloneness isn't a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the
truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to
adventure to experience the world as a dynamic presence as a changeable,
interactive thing?"
On February 7 2003, Rachel wrote:
Â
"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 of it is not at all the reality. 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. When I leave for school or work I can be relatively
certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting at a checkpoint
with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can
get home again when I'm done. I am in Rafah: a city of about 140,000 people,
approximately 60% of whom are refugees - many of whom are twice or three times
refugees. 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. And then waving and [asking] 'What's your name?' (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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. 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 you
will start.
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. 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.
