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A Bloodied Skirt Helps Break a Taboo

by Roula El-Rifai writes from Jerusalem
Asma Ibrahim stood before the microphone and pulled a bloodied skirt out of a plastic bag and held it up.
• At a conference here on women's rights, the Palestinian woman recounted publicly, for the first time, how her skirt came to be covered in blood when her father-in-law pulled her by the hair and dragged her along the ground.
Her crime: marriage to the -man's son had not produced a child.
Ibrahim wears a veil, but told the women and sprinkling of men in the audience that
she was willing to show anyone who wanted to see the bald •spot left on her head where her husband had pulled her hair out.
"I never had children and he blamed me. even though several doctors told me I was fertile. I led a miserable Ufa He beat me. He burned my clothes, insulted, me and sometimes wouldn't allow me to leave the house.
"It's just such a relief to talk about it. and to have people listen and support me." said Ibrahim, now 21. who was married at 13.
As gripping as her story was. what was even more remarkable was that it was being told at all.,at a public meeting before hundreds of people. One of the great taboos of Palestinian society — public discussion of domestic violence — is finally being broken.
More and more women's group are now turning from the political issues that dominated the struggle against 27 years of Israeli occupation to focus on social issues that simply were not discussed before, particularly outside academic circled.
Zidan, stood proudly in front of the crowd to tell of her 10-year legal struggle to win a divorce and escape a dead marriage that had never been consummated.
But the Greek Orthodox Christian courts have stalled the case. During those 10 years she has been required to take a number of medical tests to prove that she is a virgin and has had to go to court fighting injunctions ordering her to live with her husband for short • periods to see if things would work out.
Zidan and Ibrahim are not unique. Their stories are like those of many others in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a traditional society riddled with the problems caused by early marriage, domestic violence, sexual abuse and gross Inequality.
"We'propose to present real stories of women whose rights have been violated for legal or social reasons to try to break the barrier of fear and make people talk openly," said Randa Siniora, one of the conference organisers.
'This ‘conference represents’a courageous attempt to
and Gaza is based in Jerusalem and still only functions part time. It has received 110 calls from women suffering from abuse by their husbands ,or sexual abuse by relatives.
One 20-year-old woman called the hotline to tell how she had been raped since 15 by her widowed father bitt was unable to leave the home since she was’ the oldest child and had brothers and sisters to care for.
For the first time, she has someone to talk to. The presence of a large number of Palestinian women who live in Israel, where there are 800.000 Israel Arabs, added another dimension.
Aida Teuma Sleiman. director of the' Women Against Violence programme in Nasareth. said the Issue of domestic violence has received more attention in Israel, where state bodies and a more well-established feminist movement are supportive.
There are six shelters and hotlines in Israel for women and Sleiman's organisation was created in 1992 arid has opened the first two shelter® in Israel meant especially for' Palestinian women.
The debate over gender is-
/ Ibrahim was speaking before a mock tribunal, staged at a conference convened in late September by Al-Haq, a Jerusalem-based human rights group and entitled "Women. Justice and Law. Towards the Empowerment of Palestinian Women.”
The four-day conference was the culmination of a year long campaign to hold work shops and seminars on women’s rights and the law. an effort partly financed by the Canadian government.
Another speaker, Nadia
put on the table and discuss difficult issues like domestic violence and even incest.' added Eileen Kuttab. a lecturer in sociology at Birzell University in Ramallah, the West Bank
The workshops dealt with womens rights In health, edu cation, social welfare: political Involvement; protection against violence and the need for emergency hotlines and shelters: and reproductive rights.
The one telephone hotline for Women In the Weal Bank
sues In the West Bank and Gaza is complicated by the divergence of views between secular women and those who adhere closely to traditional Islam, and by an awareness that Western notions of how society should function cannot simply be transplanted.
— Gemini News
The writer Is a freelance Journalist whose research on PaiestinUfn., women's groups has been partly funded by the Canadian international Development Agency's media collaboration programme.