Rachel Corrie play returns to NY stage

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=760376

NEW YORK (AFP) -- A play about American activist Rachel Corrie is winning quiet acceptance in New York, where uproar postponed its debut a decade ago.

According to eyewitness accounts, the 23-year-old was killed by a military bulldozer in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003, following which an Israeli court in 2012 cleared the army of any responsibility for her death, rejecting a civil suit filed by the family.

Her parents and the play's director say the dimming controversy reflects a shift in American attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinian conflict.

"I think the landscape really has changed," Rachel's mother Cindy Corrie told AFP of the 12 years since her daughter was killed in 2003. Witnesses said she died trying to stop a Palestinian home from being demolished.