'You Just Can't
Imagine It'
By Rachel Corrie
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 8-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.) . . . . There are 8-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 U.S. 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 . . . . When I leave for school or work I can be relatively
certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting halfway
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 its attempt
to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these
children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew . . . .
Currently, the Israeli Army
is building a 14-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine and the
border, carving a no-man's 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 . . . .
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
. . . . 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. . . .
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.
(Editor's note: The parents
of Rachel Corrie, the American woman killed by an Israeli bulldozer
in Gaza this week, released excerpts of an e-mail message Corrie sent
them Feb. 7. This material is taken from that e-mail. )
March 21,2003