An Israeli courtroom disapproved on Tuesday charges that Israel was at fault over the death of American activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an army dozer during a 2003 pro-Palestinian manifestation in Gaza.
Corrie’s family had charged Israel of deliberately and unlawfully killing their 23-year-old daughter, plunging a civil case in the northern Israeli city of Haifa after a military investigation had cleared the army of wrong-doing.
In a ruling read out to the courtroom, judge Oded Gershon addressed Corrie’s death a “unfortunate accident”, but told the state wasn’t responsible because the incident had came about during what he termed a war-time situation.
At the time of her death, during a Palestinian uprising, Corrie was complaining against Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
“I disapprove the suit,” the judge told. “There has been no justification to demand the state pay any damages.”
He added up that the soldiers had done their extreme to keep people away from the site. “She (Corrie) didn’t distance herself from the area, as any thinking person would have done.”
Corrie’s death made her a symbol of the uprising, and while her family combated through the courtrooms to establish who was responsible for her killing, her story was dramatized on stage in a dozen countries and told in the book “Let Me Stand Alone.”
“I’m hurt,” Corrie’s mother, Cindy, said to reporters after the verdict was read.
Few Israelis showed much sympathy for Corrie’s death, which came about at the height of the arising in which thousands of Palestinians were killed and hundreds of Israelis died in suicide bombings.
Corrie came from Olympic, Washington and was a volunteer with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement.
Senior U.S. officials criticised the original military investigating into the case, telling it had been neither thorough nor credible. But the judge told the inquiry had been appropriate and pinned no blame on the army.
