Progress Amid Resistance

PALESTINE 365the testimony of one man in matters related to marriage, divorce, andcustody of children. However, in all other matters, the testimonies of menand women are regarded as equal. Women are sometimes reluctant to seekhelp from courts or law enforcement agencies, in part because the overwhelmingmajority of lawyers and judges are men, 26 and women are onlymarginally represented among police officers. Moreover, Israel’s actions,combined with the volatile political situation, have often undermined theefficacy and credibility of PA institutions. In response, there has been are surgence of informal justice through tribal and customary laws that areoften biased against women, and marital and family disputes are left to themeddling of elders or the intervention of local notables. So-called “honorkillings,” which typically involve the murder of women by relatives as punishmentfor extramarital sex, have also escalated.The treatment of women within the penal code varies depending onwhich portion of the Palestinian territories a woman lives in. The codeis de rived from Egyptian and Jordanian law, but has not necessarily beenup dated in tandem with the laws of those countries. Article 340 of theJordanian penal code, applicable to residents of the West Bank, and Article17 of the Egyptian penal code, applicable to residents of Gaza, both offerreduced sentences for honor killings. 27 The leniency in the Jordanian codeapplies to a man who kills his wife or female relative and her sexual partnerimmediately upon catching them committing adultery. The provisionin the Egyptian code applies only to husbands who have murdered theirwives and their wives’ lovers. Both penal codes reduce the prison sentenceto as little as six months; neither offers such reduced sentences for similarlysituated women. A coalition of several civil society organizations and governmentalbodies has challenged these provisions and submitted proposedrevisions to the president, who has yet to approve them. 28Separately, Hamas drafted a “unified penal code” in 2008 that wouldin corporate hudud, a seventh-century Islamic penal code featuring punishmentssuch as amputation, whipping, and stoning. Persons found to havecommitted adultery would be subject to execution by stoning under thissystem. The third reading of the law has not passed, and women’s organizationsin Gaza believe that the issue has been put to rest. 29 However,even the consideration of such a legal regime indicates a trend of growingconservatism in Gaza that may seriously affect women in the future.President Abbas signed the United Nations Convention on the Eliminationof All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in March