The New Arab reports:
Palestinian tribal leaders in the occupied West Bank have expressed their rejection of a United Nations treaty to end discrimination against women and called for feminist groups to be banned.
The leaders on Saturday called for the Palestinian Authority to withdraw from the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which it signed in 2014.
Parties to CEDAW, first introduced in 1981, are required to repeal laws discriminatory against women and take steps to protect women from discrimination and violence, enshrining the full equality of women and men before the law.
After meeting in the city of Hebron on Saturday, the tribal leaders issued a bizarre statement calling for the complete rejection of CEDAW and “all it implies”, the Palestinian Watan news agency reported.
The leaders took things further and called for a ban on all feminist organisations.
“The Palestinian Authority must withdraw and cancel this agreement and call for the closure of all the feminist institutions and those supporting them in Palestine. There are hundreds of them in Palestine and we call for the cancellation of their rental agreements.
“Anyone who rents [premises] to them is a partner in [their] crimes,” the statement continued.
The tribal leaders also called for feminist groups to be denied access to schools and told judges not to apply a recently passed Palestinian Authority law raising the minimum age of marriage to 18 for both genders.
They also warned the media against covering activities of feminist organisations and to “support the Palestinian people and tribes instead”.
The CEDAW treaty has been controversial in Palestine and lawyers and human rights activists who support it have been attacked as “traitors” and “unbelievers [in Islam]” by conservative Palestinians.
Some Palestinian activists have said that the implementation of the CEDAW treaty needs to be adjusted to the requirements of Palestinian culture and the Muslim religion.
Dina Azouni told the Middle East focused news website The Media Line, “in the matter of inheritance, the majority of the people refuse to distribute it except on the basis of religion and Islamic law, not gender equality. Not to mention same-sex marriage that is totally rejected in our society.”
Mahmoud Habash, an advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on religious affairs said on Saturday, “In the State of Palestine, even though we’ve signed the CEDAW treaty, we reject anything not in accord with our religion, heritage, and values.”
Besides the fact the story has gone largely unreported by the mainstream media (imagine for a second that Jewish Rabbis in Israel made a similar pronouncement – they’d be all over this like a bad rash), there is another really telling aspect to this story. Note what the advisor to PA President Mahmoud Abbas on religious affairs said.
“In the State of Palestine, even though we’ve signed the CEDAW treaty, we reject anything not in accord with our religion, heritage, and values.”
This rejection of the rights of women is not coming just from palestinian tribal leaders but by the PA itself! And they are doing it on the basis of their “religion, heritage, and values.”
The Media Line elaborates:
[Hanna Issa, a Palestinian legal analyst] stressed that the PA should not rush to sign agreements just to bolster its international image, but should hold extensive consultations with experts first so it could make a decision based on the Palestinians’ best interests. “Religion and religious law are extremely important here. Islamic law is the country’s legal reference,” he said.Issa added, “Our state isn’t secular; Islam is the basic religion of Palestine. In addition, our customs and traditions control society.”
Israel has been attacked mercilessly by the haters and faux human rights organizations for our Nation-State law, which declares Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Yet there is no such outrage when it comes to the Palestinian Basic law, which, inter alia, declares Islam as “the official religion in Palestine.”
Update: The tribal leaders are actually from The Supreme Council for Fatwa, related to the PA President. So these are not just “tribal leaders.”
