Marginalizing Palestinian Women

"With the political split [Palestinian Fatah and Hamas], you don't have anyone in the Gaza Strip aiming to criminalize these offences [honour killings] or even to send an ethical, moral message -- even if it is not put into effect. There is a complete silence from [Hamas] government institutions. It is very much connected to law and order -- how people perceive the strength of duty-bearers and how they would feel about being punished or getting away with a crime."
Hiba Zayyan, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

The number of so-called 'honour killings' in Palestine doubled in 2013 from the previous year [Reuters]

Israel's deleterious effect on Palestinian women is often cited as the reason why they suffer in Palestinian society. The separation of families after 1948's declaration of Israel as a state, with its attendant flight of Palestinians from Israel as combined Arab armies attacked the Jewish State to eliminate it, promising the Palestinians they would be able to speedily return; the separation wall protecting Israel from terrorist attacks by Palestinians, the responsive incursions by the IDF into Gaza to stop Hamas from lobbing rockets across the border.

Israel is held to be at fault, despite that all of its actions are in response to violent events that both Fatah and Hamas inflicted upon Israel and its citizens. In an effort to put a halt to the atrocities the dividing wall was built to protect Israeli citizens. Israel's dispatch of its armed forces into Gaza periodically is done for the purpose of stopping rocket attacks raining down on Israeli towns close to the Gaza border; the destruction of homes and businesses in Gaza can be attributed to Hamas goading Israel and using its Palestinian population as shields. First causes....

The official daily paper of the Palestinian Authority, Al Hayat al-Jadida which is published in Ramallah speaks of the position of Palestinian women in the West Bank and in Gaza, providing an insight into how women can expect to fare in any future Palestinian state. Half of those Palestinian women, according to the newspaper, have been exposed to domestic violence. A senior official in the PA Ministry of Women's Affairs reported in 2014 a 100 percent increase in "family honour" killings.

Zainab Al-Ghneimi, who manages the Women's Legal Counselling Centre speaks of this as a product of the Palestinian society's culture, inclusive of both the West Bank and Gaza. She believes a Palestinian husband claims the right of ownership over his wife, as his wife's guardian, leaving him free to command and forbid. Violent husbands follow custom, not Islamic doctrine, she insists, as no religious text encourages such violence against women.

It is, however, popularly taken for religiously-inspired doctrine. The typical Palestinian man considers that he has bought the woman he is partnered with and paid for, to become his property and who must obey his orders. Women themselves accept violence as their just due; a cultural construct taken as divinely ordained. Four of ten women agree violence is justified when a woman leaves home failing to inform her husband. Three-fourths of women feel violence to be justified if children are neglected by the wife.

Palestinian laws, according to Palestinian Media Watch, an independent online service, have been interpreted to permit violence against women, and Mahmoud Abbas has faced criticism by women's rights groups for his failure to revise legislation making it unlawful. Al-Hayat al-Jadida ran a headline: "Violence Against women in Gaza: The undermining of family life", an article claiming that in Gaza, violence against women increased in the post 2014 50-day struggle with Israel.

Poverty, according to the Palestinian Centre for Democracy and Conflict Resolution in Gaza, is the reason for this increase in violence against women as men become stressed and angry when they are unable to support their families who live in crowded conditions with little privacy. "There has also been a reversal in gender roles where women accept low-paying jobs which men consider below their status as the head of families. This has all fed into men's feelings of inadequacy and to them taking their frustrations out on their female relatives."

Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab reporter whose articles often appear in the online Gatestone Institute, and who writes for the Jerusalem Post, has an account explaining how women are treated in Gaza where Hamas imposed strict rules after taking control of Gaza in 2007. Women must wear veils in offices and on college campuses. They may not walk in public other than with a male relative. They are not permitted to smoke in a cafe, are not allowed to use hairdressing salons owned by men. Shades of Wahaabist Saudi Arabia...!

They are granted absolute freedom, however, if they sign up for combat. Women are being recruited for military training with the Nasser Eddin Brigades, a terrorist militia. The 40 Palestinian women who have so far graduated from military training camps have been granted the especial privilege of the company of men who are not close relatives. Another equal number of female combatants are undergoing training.

The UN commission on the Status of Women whose goal is to "promote gender equality and the empowerment of women", incidentally last month passed one political resolution, just one. It was sponsored by Palestine and by South Africa. Israel, it declared, is responsible for unequal treatment of women, yet another declaration by yet another UN agency that Israel is guilty of violations of human rights.