Three years after their daughter was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to protect a Palestinian home, Rachel Corrie's parents are waging a war she would be proud of.

Cindy and Craig Corrie want Caterpillar (CAT), the US company that manufactures the bulldozer that killed Rachel, to stop selling the equipment to Israel. The couple attended CAT's annual shareholder meeting on June 14 in Chicago where they sought to educate shareholders about the destruction caused by the bulldozers in Israel.

"Why would we pay for our own homes with the destruction of other people's homes? Why would we fund our retirements with the destruction of other people's olive groves? Caterpillar shareholders should know that there are good and decent people in Israel and in Palestine and shareholders should support them and not support violence," Craig Corrie told the Tribune.

According to human rights activists, since 1967, Caterpillar bulldozers have illegally razed the homes of over 50,000 Palestinians. The CAT is facing a lawsuit from the Corries and some Palestinian families.

"When you are part of the management in an international company you make a lot of decisions that affect people across the world and you don't see the results of those decisions," said Mr Corrie. Rachel went to Rafah because she wanted to see what her tax dollars were doing.

A shareholder resolution calling for Caterpillar to separate the roles of CEO and board chairperson received 27 per cent of the vote. A coalition of Jewish and Christian institutional investors - Jewish Voice for Peace, Sisters of Loretto, Mercy Investment Program, Sisters of Mercy, Maryknoll Sisters and Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers - introduced the resolution to increase the corporate accountability.

Mr Corrie believes separating the roles would allow the chairman to take a larger interest in responsibility to the community. People should be aware, "at some sort of gut level," that there was a family behind the wall Rachel stood in front of, he said.

Howard Lenow of the Jewish Voice for Peace said in a statement, "The 27 per cent vote far exceeded our expectations. It shows that many investors agree that Caterpillar's refusal to examine its sale of bulldozers that violate human rights is simply bad business."

Noura Erekat of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation said, "Caterpillar profits from each home its bulldozers help Israel to demolish, each centimetre of the Annexation Wall its bulldozers help Israel to build, each olive tree its bulldozers help Israel to uproot. Our presence here today is a message to Caterpillar that its complicity in war crimes amounts to culpability pursuant to the Nuremberg Principles and International Law."

The CAT has told activists it has neither the legal right nor the responsibility to the police the use of its equipment.

"The protest against the CAT started before Rachel Corrie was killed, but her death galvanized the movement," Matt Gaines of the Stop CAT Coalition told the Tribune.

Mr Corrie calls Rachel, his youngest child, an inspiration. "Most of what was learned in our family was learned from Rachel," he said. After the attacks on America on September 11, 2001, Mr Corrie recalls his daughter being very angry. But within a few weeks she was trying to understand why people would want to harm Americans.

In her research, Rachel learned that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories was the crux of the problem and Rafah was the centre of that conflict, said Mr Corrie. Rachel and her friends would stay with families that lived along the border between Rafah and the Egyptian Sinai. "They were hoping that the presence of internationals would prevent homes from being destroyed - or that they could at least record what was happening."

Rachel died trying to defend the home she had stayed in as a guest of its Palestinian owners. The Corries remain in touch with the Palestinian brothers and are trying to help build their home.

But Mr Corrie says the situation in the Gaza Strip has deteriorated since the Israeli withdrawal. "It's awful out there. Women are selling their jewellery to get bread for their children. It's a prison now," he said. "In the US we don't understand how violent the occupation is."

"We should have negotiated with Hamas," he said. "We gave them no chance."