[WCUSP] Helena Cobban: Protecting Palestinian females: HRW misses the mark.

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

_'Just World News' by  Helena Cobban_ (http://justworldnews.org/) 
Info, analysis, discussion-- to build a more just  world 
November 7, 2006 4:14 PM EST | _Link_ 
(http://justworldnews.org/archives/002213.html)  
Protecting Palestinian females: HRW  misses the mark

posted by Helena Cobban 
I truly do not understand some of the decisions that  my colleagues and 
friends at Human Rights Watch have been making. This week, to  much fanfare, they 
rolled out a very _well-funded  study_ (http://hrw.org/reports/2006/opt1106/)  
about domestic violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in  which 
their main order of business is to blame the Palestinian Authority  for having, 
"failed to establish an effective framework to respond to violence  against 
women and girls." 
Look, as a woman, as someone who survived some  long-ago domestic violence, 
as the mother of two daughters, and as quite simply  a member of the human race 
I am deeply concerned about the question of domestic  violence. But this 
study seems wrongly conceived and wrongly focused for a  number of reasons: 
(1) The study makes no mention whatsoever that  I can see of the huge amount 
of physical and systemic violence inflicted on  Palestinian females by the 
Israeli occupation forces. Why not? It does  make a few namby-pamby references 
along the way to the impediments that the  Israeli occupation's roadblocks, 
lockdowns etc place in the way of participants  in the Palestinian justice system 
who might want to help remedy the plight of  Palestinian females suffering 
domestic violence. But why no mention at all of  Israel's own use of lethal 
violence against Palestinian females? 
Just in the past few days, the Israelis have killed  at least three adult 
women and one girl in Gaza, maybe more. (See two of those  reported _here_ 
(http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2006/122-2006.htm) .) Back in July, 
the Israelis _killed 20 women_ 
(http://www.btselem.org/english/firearms/20060808_Civilians_killed_in_Gaza.asp)  in Gaza in one month alone. And so it  goes on 
and on and on-- lives of women snuffed out or blighted forever through  
wounding or bereavement-- at the hands of Israel, the occupier. But no mention  at 
all in this HRW report. 
(2) The report _states_ 
(http://hrw.org/reports/2006/opt1106/3.htm#_Toc148851329)  that, "the PA holds ultimate  responsibility for protecting victims and 
holding perpetrators accountable."  In my judgment this is quite incorrect. 
Israel has never relinquished its  responsibilities (or rights) under 
international law to act as the occupying  power in the West Bank and Gaza. It is 
therefore, pending a final peace  settlement that addresses the sovereignty issues 
in those areas, the power that  bears the "ultimate responsibility" for the 
protection of life and public  security in those areas. The PA is just acting, as 
it were, as an intermittent  sub-contractor to the occupying power. 
Certainly, Israel retains the right to  arrogate back to itself at any time that it 
chooses, any of the powers that the  PA may exercise-- and it has done so very 
frequently and very freely, in both  territories. (For example, when it sent 
tanks back into Ramallah in 2002 or  since, or into Gaza last month, this did not 
constitute an "international  incident" or an "act of war" against a 
neighboring state. It was simply Israel  exercising the rights as occupier in those 
areas that it has never  relinquished... Which is not to say, of course, that 
the way in which it  has exercised those rights has always been legal. It has 
not. But it does show  that Israel claims the right to re-enter at any point, at 
any time-- and that  the Security Council and the rest of the international 
"community" agrees with  this assessment.) 
So for HRW to haul the PA onto the mat of blame now  as bearing the "ultimate 
responsibility" for harms that befall Palestinian  females, while criticising 
Israel only very tangentially for hampering the PA  from doing its job is, I 
believe, seriously to miss the mark. 
It is, I repeat, Israel, as occupying power, that has  established all the 
conditions of life (and death) for the Palestinians of the  occupied territories 
and that must be held primarily reponsible for  them. 
One of the main conditions of life that Israel has  established has been its 
own frequent use of lethal force against all  Palestinians, including women, 
as noted above. Another has been its  imposition of tight constraints on the 
ability of Palestinians in both  territories to carry out anything like a normal 
human existence-- through the  imposition of stifling movement control 
regimes, economic boycott, etc  etc. 
Is it any wonder that under those demeaning and  sometimes life-threatening 
conditions of life, many Palestinian families have  found themselves stressed 
out to the point where stronger family members  increase their use of 
"domestic" violence against weaker family members? This is  a classic example of what 
Israeli saint _Amira Hass calls_ 
(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/770053.html)  "The Experiment." 
It would be good if every single person at Human  Rights Watch responsible 
for producing this latest little report could go back  and re-read the whole of 
Hass's great mid-October article on that topic. Here's  some of what she wrote:
The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are  killing each other. They 
are behaving as expected at the end of the extended  experiment called "what 
happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings [in  Gaza, alone] in an 
enclosed space like battery hens."  
These are the steps in the experiment: Imprison  (since 1991); remove the 
prisoners' usual means of livelihood; seal off all  outlets to the outside world, 
nearly hermetically; destroy existing means of  livelihood by preventing the 
entry of raw materials and the marketing of goods  and produce; prevent the 
regular entry of medicines and hospital supplies; do  not bring in fresh food 
for weeks on end; prevent, for years, the entry of  relatives, professionals, 
friends and others, and allow thousands of people -  the sick, heads of 
families, professionals, children - to be stuck for weeks  at the locked gates of the 
Gaza Strip's only entry/exit... 
It is the good old Israeli experiment called "put  them into a pressure 
cooker and see what happens," and this is one of the  reasons why this [Palestinian 
factional violence] is not an internal  Palestinian matter.

Hass's  article, by the way, refers more generally to the incidence of 
political  violence among members of the different armed factions in the OPTs. But 
it is  also completely applicable to the issue of intra-family violence there.  
But from HRW, all we get is just a few very veiled  references to the 
"difficult conditions of life" being experienced by the  Palestinians... Certainly, 
no recognition whatsoever that it is the Israeli  occupation administration 
that must-- under international law-- be held fully  responsible for those 
conditions of life.  
(3) The level of "research" carried out by HRW  for this study is laughably 
inadequate, and certainly nowhere near sufficient to  have propelled the study 
into so many of the august tribunes of the western MSM.  The study makes no 
attempt whatsoever to quantify the incidence of domestic  violence in the OPTs 
or even to provide any form of rough comparison between the  level there and 
the level in other countries. All _we are  told_ 
(http://hrw.org/reports/2006/opt1106/3.htm)  is that, "A significant number of women and girls in the 
Occupied  Palestinian Territories (OPT) are victims of violence perpetrated by family 
 members and intimate partners", and
Various studies and statistics gathered by the  Palestinian Central Bureau of 
Statistics (PCBS) and Palestinian women’s groups  record high levels of 
violence perpetrated by family members and intimate  partners, aggravated during 
times of political violence. Information  obtained from social workers, 
academics, and police officials on the  prevalence of domestic violence, incest, and 
actual or threatened “honor”  crimes, also indicate that reported rates do not 
reflect the full extent of  such violence...

Then from there the  report leaps almost immediately to concluding that "it 
is already well  established that violence against women and girls inside the 
family is a serious  problem in the OPT." And that's the best that the attempt 
at quantification can  produce.  
My own estimation? I believe it is entirely possible  that the incidence of 
domestic violence in Palestine may be lower than that in  the US, where the 
physical and social isolation of many small family units  leaves the women in 
those families particularly vulnerable... But I recognize  that we simply do not 
know about the level, in either place. 
Yes, I know there are always under-reporting problems  in this domain. But 
what, actually, do the reports that do exist from palestine  exist tell us about 
the situation there? And can they demonstrate this stated  link between 
domestic violence and the incidence of political violence? That, at  least, would 
be interesting and significant to know. But the HRW report presents  no serious 
attempts at any form of quantification or even of estimation. We are  all 
just invited to take on trust the general trope that "there's a lot of it  about, 
out there in Palestine." I note that just exactly this same same kind of  
lazy trope-- claiming concern for women's rights and women's interests-- was  
used to justify all kinds of colonial depradations of various parts of the world  
by the colonial powers of centuries past. A case of plus ça change plus c'est 
 la même chose here perhaps? 
That summary linked to there also tells us, regarding  the methodology the 
HRW people used for the report, that
This report is based on more than one hundred  interviews conducted in 
Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, Hebron,  Tulkarem, Jericho, and Gaza in Novem
ber and December 2005; follow up  communications with many of the same 
individuals by telephone and email as  well as a handful of new interviews in June 
and July 2006; and examination of  relevant laws, academic literature, policy 
analyses, surveys, and other  published materials...

Of the one hundred  interviews, as far as I can tell, roughly half were with 
social workers,  government officials, and other professionals, and roughly 
half with women who  were themselves actual survivors of domestic violence.  
This scale of interviewing, and the preparation and  publication of a lengthy 
report like this, use up considerable resources. (And  this, from an 
organization that is always begging me and others to give it more  money.) I think 
that from their elegant perch in the Empire State Building, the  HRW leaders 
could have chosen some campaigns that would have been far, far more  effective in 
bringing increased protection to the lives and wellbeing of  Palestinian 
females. They could have started by insisting that Israel  
* end its promiscuous recourse to the use of  lethal force,  
* lift the illegal blocade it maintains on Gaza and  on the institutions of 
the PA in general, and  
* dismantle both the system of checkpoints and  barricades it has erected 
deep inside the Palestinian West Bank and the  network of (completely illegal, 
and very damaging) Israeli settlements in the  West Bank. 

Then they could continue  by urging our own legislative and executive powers 
here in the US to cut  off all the financial and political support that has 
allowed Israel to persist  in these anti-humane (including anti-female) policies 
for many years.  
Moves like those would make a huge improvement in the  conditions of life for 
Palestinian women and their family members... And until  Israel enacts such 
changes, we can expect only that Palestinian women and their  menfolk will 
remain, sadly, trapped in the belly of "the Experiment." 
But HRW did not mention wide-reaching, humane, and  effective steps like 
those. No, instead they just chose to beat up on the quite  powerless and always 
vulnerable "Palestinian Authority." No marks for bravery,  friends.
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