MIDEAST: Bureaucracy Limits Rights of Palestinian Women

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, Aug 28 (IPS) As Hamas cracks down on the rights of Palestinian
women in the Gaza Strip,
their sisters in the occupied West Bank are slowly gaining ground. But a
bureaucracy, that is sometimes supported by foreign aid, is crippling
these
advances.

The Hamas authorities in Gaza have been making international headlines as
they slowly restrict the rights of women. The restrictions have included
banning women from smoking argilah (also known as hookah or water-pipe)
in public places and riding pillion on motorbikes. Schoolgirls and women
lawyers are now forced to cover their hair, and mannequins displaying
female
underwear have been banned from Gaza's shop windows.

In the West Bank, five of the Palestinian Authority's (PA) 24 cabinet
ministers
are women. Women head two West Bank municipalities. A woman has been
appointed commander of one of the Palestinian police stations, and a woman
also runs the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

The Governor of Ramallah (Palestine's de facto capital) Dr Leila
Ghanem has
several government bodies falling under her jurisdiction. Earlier, she had
been a high-ranking official in the Palestinian Security Services.

Nissan FM Radio station has a staff of 20, most of them women, and hosts a
Café au Lait programme which broadcasts six hours a day. The radio
station
focuses its programme content on the rights and interests of Palestinian
women.

"Palestinian women constitute half our society and they are beginning
to be
recognised as full partners to their male counterparts," Rabiah Diab,
the PA
minister of women's affairs told IPS.

And in the most significant development in March this year, PA Prime
Minister
Salaam Fayyad approved new legislation, which would equate "honour
killings"
of Palestinian women with murder.

Every year, throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, dozens of
women
are killed by their male relatives for allegedly having an affair or
bringing
"dishonour" of a sexual nature to the family.

Many of the murders, however, are actually motivated by other reasons. But
the men know that even if they are found guilty of an "honour
killing" they will
get off with an extremely light sentence, in the worst-case scenario.
Fayyad approved the legislation following several years of hard work and
intensive lobbying by a number of Palestinian human rights and civil
society
organisations, as well as the PA Ministry of Women's Affairs.

"We spent many late nights working on the issue and continually
pushing the
relevant authorities to give the matter the attention it needed,"
says Maha
Abu Dayyeh the director of the Women's Centre for Legal Aid and
Counselling
(WCLAC) in Ramallah.

"In March of this year Fayyad ratified our proposals after it was
approved by
the PA Ministry of Justice. It was then passed on to PA President Mahmoud
Abbas who refused to sign it and asked for further inputs," Abu
Dayyeh told
IPS.

"The PA Ministry of the Interior, which was consulted on the issue,
voiced
various objections to the new legislation. Following this, the justice
ministry
decided to ignore all our previous work and research and asked foreign
donors for a grant to finance new research on the subject," she
added.

The Interior Ministry has been involved in numerous Palestinian human
rights
abuses such as torture. It is also accused of abusing civil rights,
including
denying Palestinians passports based on political allegiances.

The ministry works in conjunction with EU Cops, a contingent of European
police and advisors based in Ramallah and funded by the European Union,
who help to train and advise Palestinian police and other security forces.
According to WCLAC, EU Cops is one of the donors of the new research
project to inquire into "honour killings" and other gender-based
issues.

"We are not prepared to start from scratch after spending years
exploring the
issue only to see our efforts – which were approved by the foreign
minister –
ignored by the PA and some who fund it. It would be unethical as well as
an
enormous waste of our time and the resources of foreign donors," Abu
Dayyeh told IPS.

Abu Dayyeh added that despite the goodwill of some senior politicians to
improve the rights of Palestinian women, Israel's continuing and
illegal
occupation of Palestinian territory was destroying the West Bank
economically,
and negatively affecting Palestinian society.

"Don't be deceived by the Ramallah bubble where some people are
getting
rich and driving flashy cars. They are the minority. The majority of
Palestinians are suffering great financial deprivation. And in our
conservative
society, when men can't be the breadwinners who support their
families, they
feel emasculated. Then it is often the women who pay the price.

"The number of women suffering from domestic violence has spiked in
the
last few years. If anything, the plight of women is getting worse despite
efforts at certain governmental levels," Abu Dayyeh told IPS.