Palestinian women establish shelters, rape hotlines

Unmarried females who are assaulted are villified by relatives, often killed

By KARIN LAUB, The Associated Press

Palestinian women establish shelters, rape hotlines — The Monitor, 15 February 1994 — The Monitor · McAllen, Texas · 15 February 1994

Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM — At age 11, Reem was raped at knifepoint by a teen-age cousin. When her family found out five years later, they punished her for shaming them and a brother broke her right foot with a cinder block.

“My mother cursed me and told me, ‘You are dirt and people are gossiping about you,’” recalled Reem, a 16-year-old Bedouin with a cherubic face framed by a pageboy haircut. Still, Reem is lucky. Unlike many, she had a place to escape from her family's abuse and death threats: a shelter set up last fall by Arab feminists.

They say it is the first such sanctuary in the Arab world, where violence against women is often hushed up. Since September, 50 teen-agers have found temporary refuge in the five-room apartment. Its location is kept secret. Reem, not her real name, has a chronic infection in her right foot and wears orthopedic sneakers.

When police brought her to the shelter four months ago, she refused to speak. “I didn't trust anyone,” she said. “I dreamt all the time that my parents were chasing after me with a knife and I woke up screaming.” She proudly showed her drawings of flowers and a scrapbook of photos of soccer players.

Starved for affection, she idolizes her counselor Hanan and called her “my good mother” in a poem. Rima Assy, director of the center, said she has space for 10 girls, but receives 30 placement requests a week and has to refuse most of them. While the shelter is a good start, she said, there is no follow-up.

Several girls had to return home with no protection beyond pledges signed by their families in the presence of police that they would not be harmed. The shelter's founders are pioneers in a region where violence against women is often condoned and victims are discouraged from seeking help.

“It is accepted as a private matter that concerns only the family,” said Hadiya Jarrad of the Democratic Women's Association in Tunisia. “The reigning mentality is that a woman can be corrected when she is on the wrong path.”

Information is sketchy, but there is enough to suggest the depth of the problem: • In Jordan, a country of 3.9 million people, about 60 women a year die in “honor killings,” said Zuhra Sharabati, a criminal lawyer.

About 500 women a year file assault complaints against their husbands, she added, but the vast majority of cases are not reported. • In Tunisia, 85 percent of the 480 female assault victims admitted in 1992 at Rabita Hospital in Tunis were beaten by their husbands, said the Tunisian Democratic Women's Association. • In the occupied territories, nearly all of the 107 Palestinian women reported slain by fellow Arabs as alleged collaborators during the uprising against Israel were in fact victims of honor killings, the Israeli human rights group Betselem said last month.

Context added by this archive

Printed under a standing section label reading VIOLENCE, and continued on page 5C. The paper's own spelling of villified and arab is kept.

Cite this item

"Palestinian women establish shelters, rape hotlines," The Monitor, 15 February 1994. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1994-012. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1994-012