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 Toronto Monday, May 16, 2005 Page A3
The price a woman must pay for defiance A Palestinian law allows more lenient punishment for so-called honour killings committed by a father,brother or husband
By CAROLYNNE WHEELER
Special to The Globe and Mail
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK -- The one-hour drive to the border that separates Jordan from Israel was supposed to be the journey that would change Faten Habash's life.
The young Palestinian Christian woman, in love with a Muslim man not approved for her, was defying traditions that required her to have her father's approval to marry. With her wedding clothes and makeup carefully packed, Ms. Habash was going to cross the Allenby Bridge with Samer, the love of her life, and elope with him in Jordan.
But first, they had to get past a checkpoint. And Samer's documents,the border guards said, were not in order.
They turned back. Ms. Habash's family, accompanied by the local governor, caught up to her and angrily dragged her back to Ramallah.She was berated and beaten,told that she could never see Samer again, that she could either marry her cousin or go to Rome and become a nun. In desperation, she jumped -- some reports suggest she was pushed -- off her family's fourth-floor balcony, and wound up in hospital with a fractured pelvis and other injuries.
"Faten was daring. She was courageous. She was very ambitious and did not fear anybody. She was convinced of her actions," said her friend Rulla Faraj, 20, whose faded jeans and sleeveless turquoise top are at odds with what other young Muslim women in her neighbourhood wear."All the time when she was in the hospital, she was saying, 'I don't want to go home because I have a feeling something will happen to me.' " During her six weeks in hospital, Ms. Habash refused to see her father and passed messages to Samer through friends.
"I asked her one day about him -- I said, 'You are giving up your whole family for him, you are Christian, he is Muslim. What if you get to Jordan and he doesn't marry you?' " recalled one of her hospital caregivers, who refused to give her name for fear of retribution from Ms. Habash's family. "She said, 'I love him so much that being with him for one hour is like a lifetime for me.' " When she was well enough to begin walking, the hospital sent her home. And after a few days of virtual house arrest and one last, desperate attempt to see her betrothed, she was dead -- one of at least seven so-called honour killings in the Palestinian territories this year,five of them in the past month.
Her father, who beat her over the head with an iron bar, is expected to serve just six months in prison for the crime, courtesy of a 1960 Jordanian law, still in force in the West Bank, that allows more lenient punishment for the murder of a woman committed by her father,brother or husband to reclaim the family's honour. A murder sentence that would usually be for life may be reduced to three to 10 years,or even less if a woman is caught in the act of adultery.
"Unfortunately, we have very traditional laws which, in one way or another, make it legitimate for people to kill women," said Amal Khreisheh, director of the Palestinian Working Women's Society for Development, which helps women escape abusive situations.
Official records show that last year in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,there were 33 honour killings -- defined as the murder, by a male relative, of a woman perceived to have shamed her family through contact with a man. But human-rights activists say the true number may be higher, since many domestic-violence cases are not classified as honour killings.
Ms. Habash's death has stirred anger in Ramallah, where earlier this month, several hundred women gathered near the seat of government to protest for a change in the honour-killing law.
But some observers believe this sudden surge in honour killings is part of a wider increase in violence in the West Bank, reflecting a population psychologically strained by five years of intifada, weak leadership and Israeli incursions.
Honour killing "is nothing new -- this is painful to say. What is new is the whole wave of killing in 2005," said Soraida Hussein, head of research for Jerusalem's Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling. People "are showing this stress they have inside. It is a tense environment," she said.
Less than a week after Ms. Habash's death, a father and mother were arrested in East Jerusalem in the murder of two of their daughters and the attempted murder of a third. The girls' brother, who is believed to have done the actual killing, is on the run. And less than a month before, a young woman and her fiancé were shot to death by the sea near Gaza City -- a murder blamed on a "morality squad" run by militant Hamas members.
Women's-rights groups say the growing influence of Hamas, which supports fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic law and is expected to do well in this summer's parliamentary elections, is one of their greatest concerns. Conflict between secular and traditional religious leaders has blocked past attempts to change family laws,forcing politicians to choose their battles carefully.
"I don't know if the current legislators will make real amendments.Tribalism is still very strong here," said Hussein Sholi, a legal adviser to a judicial committee appointed by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. "There are some principles which we cannot violate. By no argument could we legalize killing, honour killing . . .[although] for many people, this contradicts sharia law," Mr. Sholi said.
"But we should contain the more dangerous crimes, and this is not a crime that should be considered as one of the more dangerous ones."
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