62% of palestinian women reported that they were victims of psychological violence during the year 2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
24% of married women in the West Bank and Gaza had been victims of domestic violence in the year 2005.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
36% said that their husbands threatened and intimidated them into submission.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
52% of Palestinian mothers believed that at least one of their children (aged five to 17) was exposed to violence.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18% reported that their husbands beat them to have sex.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
47% of Palestinian women reported that their husbands used “force and brutality” during sexual intercourse. These are some shocking figures from the latest report by Human Rights Watch on the status of Palestinian women in the year 2005: A Question of Security: Violence against Palestinian Women and Girls
At a time when the Palestinian people are suffering from the Israeli occupation which inflects its abuse and violence on both males and females, young and old, it is heart breaking to find out that the majority of Palestinian women and children are facing even more abuse at the hands of those who are supposed to exchange with them love and care.
We the Palestinian are a nation fond of romanticizing our women and idealizing their role in the miraculous rebirth of our nation and its survival under the sun. Our poets wrote poems of the ever loving, ever watchful Palestinian woman on whose shoulder leans the wounded fighter and from whose hands drinks the thirsty prisoner. To us the Palestinian woman represents the Palestinian land and vise versa.
But it is an image that conceals behind it a dark reality of abuse of this woman whose full share in the fighting and suffering did not shelter her from the chronic chauvinistic ills of the Arabic culture.
It seems that not only the Israeli occupation we have to liberate ourselves from. We have our own inner circles of occupation that need as much fighting and struggle. What joy will we have in the freedom of our lands if then we leave the souls of our mothers and sisters occupied by fear and humiliation?
