Image By Al Monitor: Jaafar Ashtieyeh/AFP via Getty Images

Written By Dana Abbas

On August 22, 2019, Israa Ghrayeb, a 21-year-old woman from the West Bank, died as a result of being violently beaten by her male family members. The hashtag “#كلنا_اسراء_غريب” (We Are All Israa Ghrayeb) went viral on social media, demanding justice for Ghrayeb and other women who were suspected victims of honor crimes.

Ghrayeb is not the first woman to be killed as a result of domestic violence in Palestine. Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) reported that 26 women have been murdered in a case of femicide in the occupied West Bank and Gaza in 2021 alone. Despite the efforts of Palestinian activists, the progress toward reducing femicide rates in Palestine has been slow. A major contributing factor to this issue is said to be the lack of laws prohibiting, and punishing domestic violence.

“Violence occurs because we don’t have deterrence laws or protection laws. There need to be laws to protect these women from violence and these laws have to deter those who carry out violence,” said Amal Abu Srour, the Director of Programs at WCLAC.

Women civil society groups across Palestine have constantly called for the creation of such laws. In fact, already existing drafts of domestic violence laws have been consistently stalled since 2016, even when they were created more than a decade ago. Previously, the draft had reached President Mahmoud Abbas’s office for approval, but it was then redirected to the current Prime Minister’s government for review. 

“We have no idea where the draft is now,” said Abu Srour.

There have been many instances of protests calling to end gender-based violence in Palestine around the world, and while they play a crucial role in voicing a public opinion, they are not sufficient to create structural change. Women’s participation in the legislative and executive branches of the government is crucial for progress to occur. In the past year, amendments have been made by Palestinian authorities to increase the quota for women’s participation in the lists for candidates in elections, from 20% to 26%. 

Even then, this increase only addresses the number of candidates on the list, but not their elections into the Palestinian Legislative Council. In other words, the law doesn’t mirror the actual role Palestinian women play in society, nor does it appoint more than a handful of women per election. 

“Electoral lists just sought to stick to the women quota required by the law without any real conviction to engage women in political work, in such a way to reflect their size on the ground and their active role among the rank and file of these parties and in the Palestinian street,” mentioned Rima Nazzal, a member of the General Union of Palestinian Women. 

Parallelly, it does not address the larger social barriers at hand. For example, during the campaigning process in the West Bank’s elections, many women candidates did not have their faces printed out on electoral lists or campaign posters. Instead, their faces were replaced with a rose or a silhouette. 

“This directly reflects men’s domination over women in Palestinian society. It is most likely that the female candidates were pressured by their fathers, husbands, or sons to withhold their photos from the electoral lists,” mentioned Areej Odeh, director of the Women’s Affairs Team, a civil society organization, adding that women showing their faces in public is a phenomenon which is still considered shameful in Palestinian tribal traditions.

Women in Palestine are at the intersectionality of oppression; from the violent Israeli occupation to the strict and arbitrary rules of the patriarchy. As activist Sarah Abu Ghazaleh puts it best, the liberation of the homeland and the liberation of women go hand in hand, one cannot be achieved without the other.