Palestinian Honour Killings
An Inside Look at Palestinian Authority Society: Honor Killingsby Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The case of 20-year-old Arab woman, found murdered near Hevron after disappearing a year ago, offers a rare close-up of “honor killings” in the Palestinian Authority as well as other Muslim Arab societies.
The Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency, closely linked with the Palestinian Authority, reported this week that police found the body of the young woman in a well a mile from her home and arrested her uncle, who confessed to murdering her.
The Arab news agency quoted Arab Hevron police officer Ramadan Awad as saying that the facts of the case were so shocking that "as we interrogated her uncle, the people in the room could hardly hold back tears."
The woman was studying at Hebron University when she disappeared in April 2010. Although she was described by classmates as chaste, Awad said one man had proposed marriage to her, but her family refused to consent.
Convinced of an illicit relationship, the uncle confessed he and three friends stuffed her into the trunk of their car, where she was sprayed unconscious with gas to prevent her from shouting.
Before she was murdered, she regained consciousness and begged for her life.
“I drove to the Khallat Salman area, where we tied a rope around her body and dropped her into the well," Ayah's uncle told police. She pleaded, “Please don't throw me into the well. What did I do to be killed? Uncle! Please help, help … don't kill me."
Officers said it took two days to retrieve her body parts from the unused well. The police also found her handbag, identity cards and two photos of her brothers studying in the Ukraine.
The man who wanted to marry her told Ma'an, "This is not an uncle, neither is he a human being even. He is brutal. How did he imagine that bluff about an [improper] relationship between me and her? What baseless imaginations led him to that conclusion?”
Honor killings are common through the Palestinian Authority, where laws based on legislation from the Ottoman Empire and the Jordanian occupation in 1948 allow courts to commute sentences for men who carry out them out.
The Palestinian Authority has not repealed the laws even though PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas two years again signed the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
As published online at Arutz Sheva, 11 May 2011
Labels: Middle East, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, May 11, 2011
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