Wife battering, sexual abuse get attention in Gaza

GAZA (Reuters) - Most safe-houses in the Gaza Strip are meant to provide protection for armed militants on Israel's target list. Now Gaza is offering protected shelter to battered Palestinian women. Its lone women's safe-house, opened two months ago, has had eight clients, all guarded by police from the Islamist Hamas movement that runs the enclave and enforces a conservative though not radical Muslim religious code. So-called 'honor killings' are rare but not unknown among religious Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, and like every society it is not immune to wife-beating. "In 2010 there was no record of killing under the motive of family honor and this is a positive development," said Huda Naeem, a Hamas lawmaker who backed the safe house as a way station for women at risk within their own families. But feminism in Gaza is a very fragile plant. Women in many Arab communities can be killed by zealous relatives on the slightest suspicion of having relations with a strange man. And jurists in Gaza say there is no clear clause in the Palestinian law setting out the penalty for such murders. Islam also prohibits adultery and some Islamic teachings call for the stoning to death of offenders... For Palestinian women, talking openly about sexual abuse in the family is still taboo. But if it's accompanied by violence, some women can finally opt for the shelter of the safe house. Of the eight cases of abused women now under the roof of the compound, some were minors. Other women have visited briefly and discreetly, seeking professional advice and support  Full Story>>
Wife battering, sexual abuse get attention in Gaza http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE76J3Q020110720