Al Jazeera’s Inside Justice examines the civil case currently being heard over the unlawful killing of Rachel Corrie.

Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz

This is Sarah Corrie Simpson’s first visit to Israel. Her younger sister, Rachel Corrie, was killed by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, at the age of 23. Now, the family is suing the state in the Haifa District Court.

“I’m glad the day is finally here, that the eyewitnesses are having a chance to talk in a court of law,” she said in an interview with Haaretz yesterday. “It’s been seven long years.”

The witnesses, who include Rachel’s colleagues in the left-wing International Solidarity Movement, say Rachel climbed atop a mount of dirt to be sure the driver could see her, Simpson said. When he nevertheless kept coming at her, she tried to flee, but tripped and fell. “The bulldozer driver kept driving with the blade down, pushing the dirt over Rachel, and stopped when her body was under the cab.”

“My father served in the military in Vietnam and was responsible for bulldozer operations,” Simpson added. “He said there is no way that what happened to Rachel would have happened on his watch.”

She rejects the IDF’s claim that the area was an active combat zone. The witnesses claim no shots were being fired, she said, so the army could have stopped the operation and removed the demonstrators. But in any case, she added, international law requires soldiers to try to protect civilians even in a war zone.

Donald Macintyre, The Independent

The final moments of Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist crushed to death beneath a pile of earth and rubble in the path of an advancing Israeli army bulldozer, were described to an Israeli court by an eyewitness yesterday.

The parents of the 23-year-old, who was killed by the bulldozer in March 2003, were present to hear the harrowing account on the first day of hearings in a civil lawsuit they have brought against the state of Israel. The country has never acknowledged culpability over Ms Corrie’s death.

Richard Purssell, a British activist with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), said he watched in horror as Ms Corrie was dragged four metres by the bulldozer moving forward at a “fast walking pace”.

He told how her fluorescent orange jacket became invisible beneath a pile of earth churned up by the blade of the 56-tonne D9 Caterpillar machine. Mr Purssell explained that he and two other ISM volunteers had been summoned from the Rafah neighbourhood of Tel Sultan earlier in the day to help five activists prevent bulldozers from carrying out what they feared would be the demolition of Palestinian homes. The five, including Ms Corrie, were in the suburb of Hai Salaam, close to the border with Egypt.

Al Jazeera

The court trial for Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist killed aged 23 by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, has begun in Haifa.

Corrie was peacefully protesting Israel’s demolition of Palestian homes when the bulldozer crushed her to death.

The parents of Corrie are now suing the government of Israel on charges that she was denied “basic human rights” and of “gross negligence”.

Tel Aviv says the driver couldn’t see the activist and it was an honest mistake.

Al Jazeera spoke to her parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, about their daughter’s death in an exclusive interview.

Rory McCarthy, The Guardian

Richard Purssell describes ’shocking event’ in Haifa court on first day of civil suit brought by Corrie family against Israel

A British witness told a court today about how he had watched an Israeli military bulldozer run over and kill the American activist Rachel Corrie while she was trying to stop Palestinians’ homes being demolished in Gaza.

Richard Purssell, who was also a volunteer activist in Rafah at the time, seven years ago, described the “shocking and dramatic event” in an Israeli court in Haifa on the first day of a civil suit brought by Corrie’s family against the Israeli state.

Twenty-three-year-old Corrie, from Olympia, Washington, in the US, went to Gaza for peace activism reasons at a time when there was intense conflict between the Israeli military and the Palestinians.

The Corrie family lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, said he would argue that her death was due either to gross negligence by the Israeli military or that it was intended. If the Israeli state were found responsible, the family would press for damages.

Purssell, a Briton, now working as a landscape gardener, said he volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to witness events in the occupied Palestinian territories for himself. In Rafah he had been hoping to prevent the Israeli military from demolishing Palestinian homes. The organisation was strictly non violent, he said. “Our role was to support Palestinian non-violent resistance.”