Victims of Incest and Abuse in Palestine

Today 11 June 2009 a Palestinian woman of age 32 and mother of two children, was killed by her family in the southern district of Hebron. The body was found while the murderers were trying to hide their crime. According to the sources, the background of the murder was a so-called killing to “protect the honor of her family”.
In the Gaza Strip, 10 June 2009, a girl from Deir el-Balah was murdered by her father. The background of this murder was a so-called killing to “protect the honor of her family”.

The so-called “honor killings” are a crime which has increased in Palestine under the studious ignorance of the Palestinian Authority, which is busy of implementing the criminal plans of CIA the and the real government of criminal Keith Dayton which based on jailing Palestinian political activists and destroying their homes to protect Vichy Regime which is the PA. Also, the honor killings have increased in Gaza under the control of the religious radical Hamas, who justifies the honor killings with their religious believe.

In the West Bank and Gaza there are no laws which forbid the women from being murdered and prosecuted. The Egyptian laws which are implemented in Gaza and the Jordanian Laws implemented in the West Bank discriminate between men and women, and protect the murderers of women. “Honor” has become a justification for murdering women and protecting the murderers as well keeping the power in the hand of the men who lead the society, and impeding women from reaching power. This is a clear threat for all women who seek equality in their rights with men.

In many cases women have been killed as a cover for incest inside their families, to cover up sexual abuse and rape committed by their brothers, fathers, uncles …,  or simply because they met with a colleague from the university to drink a cup of coffee, because of a visit to the doctor not done in company of the husband or the mother, because they went shopping without permission from the husband, because of incitement from relatives of the husband, because of taking off their head cover against the will of the family, because of writing an e-mail to a friend, for exchanging photos, because of any kind of suspicions, because of asking the family for their inheritance, because of falling in love with somebody, because of opening the window and looking at the street, because of refusing marriage …. many small and awful reasons have caused women to lose their life in Palestine. Seldom had those women been killed because of guilt or a real sexual relationship.

Only a liar can say that in Palestine there is a woman who has never been harassed physically, insulted verbally, or abused sexually inside the family. A liar who says that the women are not harassed sexually at the offices of the Palestinian Authority. Sexual abuses are common at work, and insults, offenses, degradations, scorn are common inside the family. These issues are hidden, and no woman dares to talk about them. In many cases the father and the brother are abusing the daughter and sister sexually, and then they murder the victim in a so-called “honor killing”, because of which they are not punished, but which helps to maintain the undeserved “honor” of the murderers. More than 50 percent of the victims who were examined and found to be not virgin could only have lost their virginity because of sexual abuse by their own relatives, who then murdered them to cover up their shameful deeds. The local media has never exposed these crimes and the problems caused by the hidden epidemic of incest. This issue is always forbidden and censored by the criminals, who are always men heading the influential organizations. Even the police, in the few cases which reach them, tell the murderers that they did “a great thing, something honorable”.

Since my childhood I remember the murder of girls. I will never forget the murder of Haifa’a from my class, who was 9 years old when her parents murdered her. Another friend, Wafa, was forced to marry at age 12, and was murdered by her husband because she refused to sleep with him. A girl from school, Najah, was murdered by her brother while I was in the third class of secondary school. Two twins of age 13 years were murdered by the father and the mother in our neighborhood. Another girl was murdered in 2002 by her father, just some months before I became a refugee. And there are many more cases of murder which I will never be able to forget. Once in Jerusalem a woman was murdered by her brother before me. The story which I found out was that she had a fight with her husband and went to the brother until things calmed down; the husband came to mend fences, so she went home with him, but because she had forgotten to ask the brother for permission to leave, he followed and killed her on the street.

The PA is keeping week laws in the books, laws which protect the criminals who murder and harass women. They keep these laws which discriminate between the man and women simply because all men, or at least most of them, are involved in these crimes and they protect themselves from punishment. Even Hanan Ashrawi, who passes herself off as some sort of female hope in Palestinian politics, is silent and studiously avoids the issue of incest and honor killings in Palestine, as she too is well-paid by the cliques who condone and protect these unconscionable crimes. As a christian with an israeli ID she would lose too much if she was to mention these issues, and I know of one instance in which she declined to speak about a case in which a christian woman was murdered by relatives.