Scot who saw horrific deaths in Gaza condemns 21-year justice failure

Nicholas Durie, a community organiser and data programmer from the Maryhill area of Glasgow was just 19 when he witnessed the horrific death and says neither her family or those of another protester Tom Hurndal who was shot in the head a month later have seen justice served.

Speaking at length for the first time about his time as a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a movement focused on assisting the Palestinian cause in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, he has told how he would never want to return to Gaza again after what he witnessed.

Now a 40-year-old father-of-three, he said he believes Israel should be called to account for past atrocities in Gaza.

But he fears what he calls the "genocide in Gaza" will never stop while the US continues to support Israel politically, financially and militarily.

Mr Durie, who is has been invited to give a talk about his experience for the first time at weekly pro-Palestinian protests in Glasgow, says he is lucky to have survived his time with the ISM in Gaza initially believing there was no chance that "Americans or white British people" would be killed for fear of a diplomatic incident.

He says he was "very wrong" and told of a failure of support for those who were standing up for the Palestinian cause.

He revealed he had at the time received a ten year ban from entering Israel being declared "a threat to the security of the state".

Rachel Corrie was was run over by a 60-tonne D9 bulldozer built by Caterpillar Inc and operated by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on March 16, 2003 whilst she was protesting at the demolition of Palestinian homes in southern Gaza. In 2012, an Israeli court ruled that the state of Israel was not at fault for the her death.

Footage from Rachel's interview conducted by Middle East Broadcasting Company on March 14th, 2003, two days before she was killed.

Ms Corrie's family had brought a civil claim for negligence against the Israeli ministry of defence and requested a symbolic $1 in damages and legal expenses.

The judge said the 23-year-old's death was a "regrettable accident" and that the state was not responsible.

Judge Oded Gershon, presiding at the Haifa District Court, said Ms Corrie had been protecting terrorists in a designated combat zone.

He said the bulldozer driver had not seen her, adding the soldiers had done their utmost to keep people away from the site.

He said she "was accidentally killed in the framework of a 'war-related activity' and the bulldozer driver and his commander was cleared of blame.

An Israeli army investigation in 2003 concluded its forces were not to blame for Ms Corrie's death.

The Israeli army argued the area was being used by militants and that the protesters should not have been in a closed military zone.

The army's investigation found that Ms Corrie was not visible and that she was killed by debris falling on her.

But Mr Durie, who was with Ms Corrie, said that it was impossible that the bulldozer driver did not see her. Pictures taken on the day she died show her in an orange high-visibility jacket carrying a megaphone and blocking the path of an Israeli military bulldozer.

Mr Durie and Ms Corrie were acting as human shields to try to stop the Israeli army demolishing Palestinian homes and clearing land around the Rafah refugee camp.

Nicholas Durie

It came against a backdrop of what came to be known as the Second Intifada, an uprising spread over several years against what Palestinians considered were major abuses. It involved suicide bombings and rocket attacks by Palestinians, and targeted killings and aerial bombardment by the Israeli Defence Forces.

Mr Durie said: "When Rachel was killed she slipped on the way down. The bulldozers kept moving. They knew they were killing her.

"They found that Rachel had been killed by some falling concrete and that what we had done to embarrass Israel, was take her lifeless corpse and put it into the tracks of the bulldozer in order to frame Israel. But the story changed consequently.

"It is clear that whoever was responsible was not the bulldozer driver but the person who gave the order.

"No justice has been served on Rachel. Her parents have sought justice and they didn't get any."

He said that in the lead up to her death he and others "placed themselves bodily" between the structures they were trying to demolish and the bulldozers "actively attempting to hinder, curtail and frustrate their activities".

He said at times the bulldozers would back off and at times they would be forced to move.

On one occasion one of the bulldozers wedged him while he was sat down, between the mound of earth carried between its blade and the foundations of an incomplete building.

Mr Durie, who provided an affidavit for future court ceases, said the bulldozer driver saw him an on this occasion and elected to back up.

Later he was sitting on top a pile of rubble when he witnessed Ms Corrie's death.

She was crouched about fifteen metres from the front of the bulldozer, and "was patently within the line of sight of the bulldozer driver" and was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket.

The bulldozer moved at a speed of some five miles per hour and with a "slow and purposeful advance" reached Ms Corrie.

He said at no point did the driver of the bulldozer which killed Rachel make any attempt to stop or slow down before she fell to the ground and was engulfed by a mound of earth.

Mr Durie and six other ISM activists who were present began screaming at the driver, and gesturing him to stop.

But he said the driver did not stop or adjust his speed continuing for another four to five metres without lifting the bulldozer blade.

While Mr Durie and his volunteer colleagues continued to scream, the bulldozer then reversed for 20 metres uncovering Ms Corrie whose face was cut and bleeding, and whose body was lying in what he called a "twisted broken position". She died in hospital from the injuries she sustained just 20 minutes later.

At the time of Ms Corrie's death, house demolitions were common, part of an increasing cycle of violence from both sides.

The IDF said the homes it targeted were harbouring militants or weapons or being used to conceal arms-smuggling tunnels under the border.

Human rights groups said the demolitions were collective punishment. Between 2000 and 2004, the Israeli military demolished 1,700 homes in Rafah, leaving about 17,000 people homeless, according to the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem.

A month later Mr Durie was there when 22-year-old British photojournalist, Tom Hurndall was shot in the head by an Israeli army sniper as he tried to rescue Palestinian children from the line of gunfire in Gaza.

He died in January 2004 after being in a coma for nine months and that his killer, and IDF sniper, Taysir Hayb was released after serving just six years in prison.

Hayb was convicted of manslaughter and obstruction of justice by an Israeli military court in April 2005.

A motion tabled last year and signed by 62 MPs raised concerns at the lenient sentence and the "cursory nature" of the military investigation which preceded saying they were "examples of a culture of impunity in the state of Israel’s use of illegal extra-judicial killings".

It urges the Government to "uphold the principle of accountability for war crimes committed in Israel and Palestine".

"With Tom, at the time this happened, he had been moving children who were being shot at into a street where there wasn't line of sight," said Mr Durie. "They shot him with a dumdum bullet and blew the back of his skull off. He was only kept alive at the mercy of the hospital to avoid a diplomatic incident.

"The explanation the Israeli military put out first was that he had had been wearing military fatigues and firing at them with a Kalashnikov . After about twenty minutes, the Army story on the radio was that he had been firing a pistol. The evidence was he was wearing a high-viz orange jacket.

"But it is the way they do business. First tell a big lie, it is the first thing people read and a couple of weeks later, the truth gets out.

"I was standing with another volunteer Alice a block away at the time. She ran to the scene to hold the remains of his brains in.

"We later learned that he'd been shot very precisely with an illegal exploding bullet, in a place on the skull snipers target for am effective kill.

"Israel intervened in his medical care to keep him alive I think largely for political reasons."

He said he was deported after re-entering Gaza at Erez, having gone to see Mr Hurndal on life support in Be'er Sheva, and spent a week in jail.

"I knew he was dead the moment he fell. People don't survive those sorts of injuries, or if they do it's a mercy if they didn't.

"Again, this is a case where those responsible have a command structure. A Bedouin man did time. Not a lot of time. But he was clearly a scapegoat. The people behind these things never face justice."

He accepts he is lucky to be alive.

"I remember I went to an internet cafe to write up the day's events. By the time I left the Israelis opened fire on the city.

"I remember being trapped in the street and thinking, if they invade with tanks, you just get killed if you are not indoors.

"I remember seeing a man walking on the other side of the street, and he gestured to me to hurry up. And I thought, he doesn't have a choice.

"Then crossing an alleyway I just missed getting shot, and so I was glad to get inside.

"There were other occasions when I was shot at.

"The ISM was premised on the idea that Israelis wouldn't kill Americans or white British people. Because that would cause a diplomatic incident.

"The time I was there Israeli policy flipped.

"I participated in military tribunals, stayed with families who were being targeted, and attended funerals before being detained, interrogated and deported. During my arrest I was held for a week inside a detention centre."

He said he would not return to Gaza.

"I was young then," he said. "I wouldn't do that now."

The Embassy of Israel was approached for comment.