• Roughly 1,360 night raids are conducted on Palestinians each year.
• Nearly four in ten women in the Gaza Strip face domestic violence, mostly by their partners.
• 50 per cent of Palestinian women and 63 per cent of Palestinian men agreed that a woman should tolerate violence to keep the family together.
• In Gaza, about 3,000 displaced pregnant women suffer lack of access to basic services.
• 40,000+ pregnant women in Gaza are deprived of access to basic reproductive health services.
• In Gaza, 61% of women and 86.3% of young women are unemployed. The female labor force participation rate is 16%.
• In the West Bank and Jerusalem, 26% of women and 64.7% of young women are unemployed.
• Women face escalating racial harassment, assaults, shootings and attempted kidnappings by extremist settlers.
• Calls to a helpline in the oPt related to abuse and violence increased dramatically after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Some laws that PNA had enacted provide for limited gender equality. However, women cannot enjoy this equality because of continuing application of old local laws that maintain the domination of patriarchal traditions in the society.
• The State of Palestine lacks a unified law to protect women against all forms of violence, including sexual abuse and harassment.
• The state of Israel regularly utilizes the prevention of prisoner’s visits as a punitive measure against Palestinians.
• “Honor killings” have been more common in the last decade, becoming one of the main causes of femicide in Palestine.
• 93% of surveyed women have suffered or still suffer from verbal harassment.
• Women are legally allowed to file for divorce, but divorced women are socially blamed for their broken relationships and are considered a burden on their families.
• Married women in poor households are three times more likely to experience repeated physical violence than well-off women (29% versus 9%).

Sources

• “Facts and Figures” from UN Women
• “Fact Sheet: The State of Palestine’s Women Under Occupation” from the Permanent Mission of the State of Palestine to the United Nations
• “A crisis within a crisis: fighting Gender-Based Violence (GBV) during COVID-19” from OCHA oPt 
• “Report on the status of women and girls in the State of Palestine” from the General Union of Palestinian Women 
• “Islamic Relief Palestine: Gender-based violence against women and girls in Gaza – Protection and Inclusion Framework” from Islamic Relief
• “Gender-based violence in the occupied Palestinian territory” from Bisan Center for Research and Development

Learning More 

In addition to these reports, you can learn more by watching this WILPF interview with Amal Abusnour, the director of programs for WCLAC, about “Palestinian Women under Prolonged Occupation”. You can then read the report, “Palestinian Women UnderProlonged Israeli Occupation: The Gendered Impact of Occupation Violence”. To go deeper, we will be developing an extensive list of Additional Resources at the bottom of this week’s entry as well as a YouTube playlist on the subject.