GAZA, 17 March 2003 — An Israeli military bulldozer killed an American woman protesting the demolition of a house in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday.
The woman, identified as 23-year-old Rachel Corey, was lying on the ground in front of an army bulldozer when she was covered with large quantities of sand, Ali Al-Shaar, a witness to the incident, told Reuters. “The American girl was lying in front of the bulldozer when the bulldozer took sand and put it over her,” Shaar said.
Corey was taken to Al-Najar Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip where doctors said she died from severe skull and chest fractures.
“The bulldozer put sand on her and kept crushing her,” said Nicholas Dure, a fellow member of the International Solidarity Campaign to Protect the Palestinian People protest group.
Meanwhile, the Haaretz newspaper said yesterday that Israel has struck the word “independent” from any description of a future Palestinian state in its answer to an internationally drafted Middle East peace plan. Israel instead wants the road map drawn up by the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States to stipulate a Palestinian state with “certain attributes of sovereignty,” the daily said.
Haaretz also said that Israel wants the future of the controversial Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, considered illegal under international law, to be “determined only by a final agreement, and therefore Israel is willing to grant territorial continuity to the Palestinians only where this is possible.”
