Palestine

Today, descendants of the ancient people of Palestine generally reside in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, or East Jerusalem. After the British pulled out of the area in 1948, the United Nations was asked to broker a settlement between the competing claims of Arabs and [Page 1067]Jews. This resulted in the land being divided among the newly created Jewish state of Israel and the Arab states of Jordan and Egypt. Through the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, Israel won control of both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The following decades were filled with occupation and strife, but by the 1990s, Israel had agreed to allow self-government in Palestinian-populated sections of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, conflicts continued between Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, and the Palestinian Authority. In 2007, Hamas conducted a takeover of the Gaza Strip, leaving Palestine to maintain a fragile existence on the West Bank. As a result of decades of fighting for lands and a national identity, Palestinian women have been subjected to major instability. As Muslim women, they have also had to fight for the right to be respected as individuals.

Within the West Bank, 72 percent of the population live in urban areas. Ethnically, 83 percent of the people are Palestinian. From a legal perspective, women have equal standing with males. However, according to religious laws, the rights of males predominate. Palestinians have a per capita income of only $2,900 and an unemployment rate of 16.3 percent. Poverty is widespread on the West Bank, and 46 percent of the people, mostly women and children, live below the poverty line.

The infant mortality rate is 15.76 deaths per 1,000 live births. Female infants (13.93) have an advantage over male infants (17.87), and that advantage continues throughout life. Women have a life expectancy of 76.65 years, compared to 72.54 years for males. That advantage does not apply to literacy, however, and only 88 percent of females are literate, compared to 96.7 percent of males. Despite that handicap, women are more likely to pursue higher education. Palestinian women have a fertility rate of 3.22 children per female, and a median age of 20.8 years.

By the 1990s, Palestinian women's organizations began banding together to create the Action for Legal Reforms, designed to reform family codes and grant women equal rights in inheritance, marriage, divorce, and maintenance and custody of children. The plan also called for the abolition of child marriages, “honor killings,” genital mutilation, and being treated as property. According to a 2004 United Nations report, almost a fourth of Palestinian girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are married, divorced, or widowed.

Another report revealed that 40 percent of all marriages are the result of parental decisions. Polygamy continues to be accepted by Islamic dictates, and some Palestinian males have up to four wives. In the case of divorce, mothers retain custody of sons until the age of 10 and of daughters until the age of 12. If women remarry, they forfeit custody.

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