Tribal Social Mores

"My husband was under tremendous pressure. The family wanted to banish us from the West Bank and people started rumours that my husband wasn't mentally stable."
"My husband is a peaceful man and this is completely out of character but the pressure was too intense."
Laila Zeidan, Deir Al Ghusun, West Bank

"It's not clear that honour killing is on the rise, but we can say that documenting such cases has improved and police and media are more aware of them."
Surayda Hassan, general director, Women Affairs Technical Committee

But the simple facts are that a young woman, estranged from her husband, with her three children under the custody of her husband as per Palestinian cultural demands, and now living with her parents, was accused by her community of not being a chaste woman, of having extramarital relations with a married man other than her husband. There was no proof that anything untoward had occurred, suspicion was enough; it was proof.

A society based on the patriarchal notion under Islam, that a woman's behaviour must always be above and beyond suspicion. She is the property of her husband, and her children his property as well. A woman has little recourse to the kind of justice that might view her as her children's primary caregiver; she sacrifices her role as mother if she decides to leave an abusive or unhappy marriage; that is her penalty. And obviously, it is not the only penalty.

Members of Thamar Zeidan's extended family, including a Palestinian lawmaker, Abed Al-Rahman Zeidan, had made a public accusation of "disgraceful and outrageous acts", on the young woman's part, through a petition widely circulated in their home village near the West Bank town of Tulkarem. The 32-year-old woman's father, Munther, was urged by the petition to "reinstate the cultural and religious morals in his family."

The Media Line    Extended members of the Thamar Zeidan's family accused her of "disgraceful and outrageous acts" in a petition that was widely circulated in her village of Deir Al Ghusun, near the West Bank town of Tulkarem. Reacting to demands to restore the family's honour, Munther killed his daughter.

That is always doublespeak for committing an act of permanent contrition, leading to the restoration of family honour. The stain removed. In this culture of patriarchal domination of females under conservative Islam, the convention is to restore honour by taking the life of someone deemed to be unworthy to continue living. Thamar Zeidan was marked out by her extended family as possessing just such an unworthy life.

In September a man with whom Ms. Zeidan had become friendly, Iyad Na'lweh, married, but interested in marrying her as a second wife, permissible in Islamic law, made his intentions known. She reciprocated his interest but her family did not approve of him, a labourer who worked in Israel, and with a presumed drinking problem. He was one night seen outside her house, and that spurred rumours.

"People said they had been together in her room for the past three days, but that's impossible. In fact, I had been in the hospital and she spent the past three days in my room there", her mother said. Ms. Zeidan was taken to Ramallah to allow the situation in her village to cool down. And that's when the petition began its circulation. Thamar's mother thought her relatives would be pacified if they disciplined their daughter.

"I wanted my husband to discipline her. We took away her phone and limited her movement", she explained. And then, her husband drove to Ramallah to pick up their daughter and bring her back home again. At least that's what the woman's mother thought. "He told us she will be safe and he won't surrender to the family's pressure", her sister Suad said.

She wasn't safe. He did surrender her life to the permanently erasing the humiliating ignominy of false accusations that impugned the family's honour. He killed his daughter to appease the scorn and anger of the extended family who insisted that their honour had been besmirched by the unforgivably loose actions of one of their members, Thamar Zeidan.

At the news of her death, one of her aunts held a celebratory feast, family honour restored. "Thamar's sisters kicked relatives who came to pay their respects out of their house. They were angry because they believe these were the same people who helped spread gossip that led to killing Thamar", a brother-in-law said.