Honor Killing in Palestine : Violence against women is an ancient phenomenon. During the time of war or peace, women have been treated inhumanly throughout time and have been subjected to all forms of violence and discrimination whether by state agencies or community members.
Gender based violence which is directed against women still constitutes a global phenomenon. Amnesty International points out that a minimum of one woman out of three are subjected to beating or are forced into sex or subjected to other types of assaults. Honor killing has been seen as an extreme form of violence against women as well as a flagrant violation of the most fundamental human right, which is right to life.
United Nations (UN) estimates that around 5,000 women are killed by one of their family members per year in defense of so called “honor of women”. In Palestine, woman’s right to be free and treated equally compared to men as well as to be protected from all forms of discrimination and violence are still controversial issues in society.
The Nature of Honor, Shame and Honor Killing
Defining the concept of honor is the first step to understand fully the nature of honor killings within a society. Honor is an intangible and vague characteristic. Regardless of numerous numbers of definitions of honor, the term is still not defined clearly, with regard to whether it is conceived of as an inherent value or a cultural trait, which has been taught as. Honor has been viewed as social feature and a human being’s property.
Others have described honor as a key element in shaping gender identity. Regardless of the differentiation in defining honor based on the nature of the region and prevailing culture, honor has been seen as primary property of human beings for centuries. In other words, honor was used to measure the social status of a person within the society.
In the Arabic culture, “the ideal of masculinity is underpinned by a notion of ‘honor’ of an individual man, or a family or a community-and is fundamentally connected to policing female behavior and sexuality”. In such a culture there have been two kinds of honor, first so called “Sharaf” which is related to the dignity of an individual, family and entire tribe or clan. Second, there is “Ird” which is connected to a woman’s honor. The person’s failure to abide by moral behavior will reduce his dignity. It will not stop there, this failure will extend to his/her social status in society as well. The term of Ird implies chastity or purity.
The good behavior of a woman will not affect her status in the society while her misconduct will definitely reduce her image in her community members’ eyes. As a result and since the action of a woman will endanger the honor and the social status of the entire family, it may produce a violent reaction, which might amount to ending her life.
How the Palestinian Criminal System dealt with this issue?
As it is shown before that the important element in protecting the recognized rights within the covenant is to enact laws, especially penal laws. The function of these laws is to criminalize and punish any act, which poses a violation to human rights and to provide effective protection. Hence, the extent of harmonization between the Palestinian national laws will be tacked, especially the two penal codes that apply to Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza) and the provisions of the ICCPR.
These codes are applied to honor killings, after which sentences the sentences imposed on the perpetrator in crimes of honor were reduced or in certain cases even acquitted the accused of the crime. Let’s start by mentioning that Palestine possesses a unique legal framework, which combines Jordanian, Egyptian, British, Ottoman and of course modern Palestinian laws, which are applicable in the West Bank and Gaza. Moreover, there is also “Israeli Military Orders”. The non-unified character of the Palestinian legal system causes contradictions and loopholes in the Palestinian legislation’s.
The penal code applicable in the West Bank is the Jordanian penal code No. (16) of 1960. This code is derived from the Latin legal system. The validity of this law is due to the administration of Jordan over the territory of the West Bank, which remained for nearly two decades from 1948 till 1967. Lets start by first tackling; article 340 of the penal code, which is related to honor crimes, committed in the West Bank.
The article states that:
- “He who discovers his wife, or one of his female relatives with another in an adulterous situation, and kills, wounds or injures one or both of them, benefits from a reduction in penalty.
- He who discovers his wife, or one of his female ascendants or descendants or sisters with another in an unlawful bed and he kills, wounds or injures one or both of them, benefits from a reduction of penalty”.
Article 340 contains two kind of excuses, the first one exempts the perpetrator from the sentence if he surprises his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery or fornication with a strange man and kills one or both of them.
The second one is mitigating the sentence to be lighter if he surprises his wife or one of her female relatives on illicit bed and killed one or both of them. The second is mitigating the sentence if he surprises his wife or one of his female relatives on unlawful bed and kills one or both of them.
Given the provisions of article 340, the mitigation requires two main conditions to be met in order to benefit from the mitigation. First, the perpetrator must surprise the victim, whether during the sexual intercourse or by watching the victim with the partner in a situation which shows without any doubt that the adultery has taken place shortly before or will occur shortly after. The reason for requiring such a condition is that once the perpetrator surprised the victim, he might be carried away by his emotions, leading him to the commitment of the crime. Thus, if the perpetrator knew about the infidelity of his wife, the perpetrator cannot invoke article 340. Second, the murder must occur immediately, since the anger will calm down with the passing of time, which does not justify the crime under provisions of article 340 of the penal code.
From the wording of the said article, it is clear that this article discriminates against women since only males are beneficiaries of these two excuses, where women cannot benefit from such excuses, if they murder their husband while committing adultery. Article 340 is not the only one that mitigates sentences, article 98 of the penal code also does. It states that “whoever commits a crime while in a state of rage, which is the result of an unjustifiable and dangerous act committed by the victim, benefits from a mitigation”. This article is based on the “Provocation element” in case of surprise when the perpetrator sees his wife or a female relative in unacceptable sexual situation.
The article assumes that this situation provokes the perpetrator and puts him under the effect of a fit of fury to the extent that he loses control over his reaction toward the victim, which might trigger him to eventually kill the victim. In the case of No. 6/2006 before the court of Ramallah the perpetrators were the victim’s brothers. The victim was killed by forcing her to drink a toxic liquid because of her pregnancy from a person she was working with. The court issued an initial decision to sentence the first accused person to temporary hard labor for 15 years and the secondary defendant to temporary hard labor for 10 years.
The court viewed that both perpetrators committed this crime under the affect of a fit of fury resulting from their sister’s illegitimate pregnancy that affected their honor and their family. Therefore, according to article 98 of the penal code the court decided the mitigation of the sentence from 15 years to 8 months for the first accused person and from 10 years to 7 months for the second defendant.
Honor killing in Palestine is a matter, which has to be debated in a more serious approach, since these types of offences are still continuously occur and constitutes an actual threat to the social fabric. The victims of honor killing, not only, the woman executed by her relatives without humanity, but also the whole community.
Moreover, the Palestinian judicial philosophy should be changed as well since the judiciary plays a vital role in achieving criminal deterrence through strict punishments. Stricter punishments will make the perpetrators think before committing such a crime. Moreover, as any other person within a community judges are affected by the surrounding culture and thus changing judges’ attitudes is an integral part of combating honor killing.
Most importantly the governments and the international community as well as the local community must work together to combat such crimes since these crimes constitute a great threat to the fabric of the community in these countries. These crimes call for serious cooperation between the concerned authorities locally and internationally, which need to address the roots of the crime and its real reasons. As mentioned, legislative measures are important but not sufficient.
