Mideast Violence Moves to the Home Front

JERUSALEM -- In a small sanctuary near the ancient Phoenician city of Caesarea, Israeli therapists are treating discharged soldiers for an affliction some call “intifada syndrome”: The young men are violent and confused. In Palestinian cities, social workers face a wave of women who were beaten or abused at home and a rash of intra-clan murders.

Everywhere, children are learning about hate. Life seems cheap. The basic fabric of the family, in two societies where family ties are strong, is being shredded by the trauma of war.

With Israelis and Palestinians locked in their deadliest fighting in decades, urban violence by gunmen and tanks is spilling over into other circles of life, creating fissures that will have an effect long after peace is declared.

Extremism and a tolerance of brutality have spread. Despair over the future -- over whether there even is a future -- dominates the thinking of youth as well as their parents.

Psychologists, social workers, scholars and other experts report an alarming rate of domestic violence.

Economic hardships brought on by war exacerbate the tension. Palestinian men trapped at home by Israeli-imposed closures and curfews feel diminished self-worth and often take it out on the family, experts say. They’ve been humiliated at checkpoints in front of their children; they are unable to provide for or even protect their families. They watch soldiers destroy homes and shoot or arrest their neighbors.

Unemployed Israeli men have seen their traditional role as breadwinner threatened. Nearly one in five Israelis now lives below the poverty line; three in five Palestinians are similarly impoverished.

Both societies report a growing acceptance of violence. Palestinian children revere suicide bombers; Israeli children chant “Death to the Arabs!” on school playgrounds.

“The short-term impact [of the war] may sometimes look positive: unity, cohesion, patriotism. But the real damage is in the long term,” said Zvi Eisikovits, dean of the college of social welfare and health at Israel’s University of Haifa.

“Attitudes toward violence are changing to the point where violence is an acceptable means to solve problems. There is an overall desensitization to human life and a desensitization to suffering as a way to survive suffering.”

In other words, neither side recognizes the suffering of the other because its own suffering is so great. Each side dehumanizes the other as a way to make abuse acceptable.

Eisikovits co-wrote the most comprehensive study to date on violence against women in Israel. He found that 11% of women said their spouses assaulted them. What he found most alarming, he said, was the high percentage of women -- one in four -- who justified the abuse.

Right and wrong get blurred when a nation is at war, he said.

“It is very hard to tell an 18-year-old that it’s OK to brutalize somebody in [the Palestinian city of] Jenin, but it’s not OK to go home and brutalize your girlfriend.”

At a crowded shelter in the Israeli city of Herzliya, with an address that is kept secret to protect the residents, Ruth Rasnic must turn away three of every five women who seek help. Some arrive with broken limbs, cracked teeth and bruised faces. But there isn’t room for all of them. There are only 13 shelters in all of Israel.

“We need 50,” she said.

The pervasiveness of the military in Israeli society -- almost everyone serves a stint in the army -- makes weapons readily available. Restrictions on gun possession do not take into account a man’s record of battering, advocates say, and reservists are routinely allowed to take home army-issue weapons.

The war and militarization of society are only partly to blame for the increased violence. Immigrants from more conservative countries, such as Ethiopia, where women have no public role, are often unsettled by culture shock; alcoholism may be a factor among immigrants from areas such as the former Soviet Union.

“From talking to hundreds of women, I get the feeling that a man who is violent will be violent for any reason,” said Rasnic, a pioneer in the fight against domestic abuse in Israel. “But it will accelerate at times of stress: bereavement, loss of job, war -- any serious tension triggers more violence.”

More women in Israel were killed by male relatives in 1991, the year of the Persian Gulf War, than in any other year, Rasnic said. The average is 20 per year; that doubled in 1991, went back down until last year, and then jumped by about 50%. (The figures include all Israeli women, including Arab Israelis, among whom Rasnic believes such killings are greatly underreported.)

About 7,000 women have filed criminal complaints this year alleging violent abuse by their spouses, according to Gideon Ezra, deputy minister for internal security.

Alona, a 32-year-old store clerk, arrived at Rasnic’s shelter a couple of months ago with her 3-year-old son. Her husband started slapping her shortly after the boy’s birth, but it got worse this year after he lost his job with a high-tech company, she said. Alona doesn’t want to blame the conflict, though, because that would be excusing his behavior.

“It affects me too, but I get up in the morning and do what I have to do,” she said of the intifada. “If I can deal with it, why can’t he?”

Many women do not reach shelters.

Over the summer, Herzlyia Yair obtained a restraining order against her husband, Yeheskal, whom she was trying to divorce. Despite the court order, he allegedly strangled her and beat her to death with a hammer.

A few days later, Rachel Nizri allegedly was set on fire by her husband. She languished for weeks before dying.

Israel is not as violent as many Western countries, including the United States. But recent headlines have been sensational: two 13-year-olds arrested for raping and beating an 11-year-old; a rash of attacks by teenage girl gangs on classmates that left several young girls injured and traumatized.

Road rage is on the rise; young Jewish settlers fight young Jewish soldiers trying to evict them from illegal outposts in the West Bank.

“Nowhere is the slide to brutality in this country more appallingly evident than in the rising tide of abuse against women,” columnist Thomas O’Dwyer wrote in the influential daily newspaper Haaretz. It testifies, he said, to “the legacy of occupation, conflict and a pervading culture of vengeance and intolerance that has wiped any mention of coexistence off the national agenda.”

It is more difficult to quantify violence against women in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip. Violence and incest are taboo topics but are tolerated in much of Arab culture.

Palestinian society’s economic, social and political gains of the last decade have been lost to renewed Israeli occupation and destruction of basic infrastructure. Traditional roles are being strained, and religious fundamentalism is growing.

The number of Palestinian women killed by relatives soared from eight in 1998 to about 30 this year, according to Suad Abu Dayyeh, head of the social work division of the Palestinian Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling in East Jerusalem.

“Honor killings,” in which a male kills a female relative who is accused -- often erroneously -- of sullying the family’s reputation, have always been a problem in the Arab world, including the Palestinian territories. But the rate in the West Bank and Gaza Strip now rivals that of Jordan, which is less progressive, Abu Dayyeh said, reflecting the lawlessness that has washed over the Palestinian territories.

“Everything we built has failed, so no one trusts the Palestinian Authority anymore,” she said. “The lack of authority makes people do whatever they want.”

Unemployment, poverty and stifling restrictions on their movements make men feel impotent. They might also lose their home to Israeli demolition or a child to Israeli gunfire.

Family dynamics are changing, experts say. The father is no longer seen as the protector; sons are less respectful of their mothers and sisters. Children go to extremes; they are likely to either be apathetic or want to become “martyrs,” dying for the Palestinian cause.

Thousands of men have been arrested, hundreds killed. Travel to home villages is often nearly impossible, cutting Palestinians off from their extended families and their traditional support network.

Women may be pushed into decision-making roles when their men are gone. But if the man returns, or if the man is present but unable to provide for his family, the tensions and frictions can be devastating.

Of women who seek help from the center in East Jerusalem, the percentage who had run away from home -- the epitome of desperation for a Palestinian woman -- nearly quadrupled between 1999 and this year. Incest cases tripled in the same period.

“We already have a patriarchal, gender-insensitive society that segregates the sexes, and then you have a political situation that makes women more vulnerable,” Abu Dayyeh said. “How can you imagine what the future will be? We’ve gone back 20 years.”

There is a single shelter for Palestinian women, in the West Bank city of Nablus; Abu Dayyeh, whose job is to counsel women there, has been able to reach Nablus from Jerusalem only twice since the fighting and Israeli roadblocks began. Women who need protection are often placed in jails or convents.

Unable to put up with her father’s beatings, 24-year-old Menel ran away to relatives. They returned her. She ran away again to more distant relatives. They also took her home. The next time she ran away, she was put in jail. But when Israeli forces bombed the jail as part of an assault on the Palestinian Authority, she was turned over again to relatives. In September, her 16-year-old brother stabbed her to death.

The breakdown of legal structures reinforces tribal tradition to the detriment of women. So does religious fundamentalism. According to a recent poll sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of the Palestinian Working Woman, 57% of Palestinians believe a husband has the right to beat his wife if her behavior impinges on his “manhood.”

Other surveys have shown a growing desire, especially among young Palestinians, for an Islamic state, with little regard for the political participation of women.

These trends, reinforced by an often bellicose media, lack of education and extremist religious figures, frighten people like Randa Siniora, director of the Al Haq human rights organization based in East Jerusalem.

“We are creating children who are becoming more violent, more extremist,” she said.

Siniora counts herself among an earlier generation who fought for national liberation through more peaceful means such as university demonstrations and marches, with an emphasis on human rights and pluralism. The apparent failure of those efforts and the persistent Israeli occupation have alienated the new generation, radicalizing the struggle, she said.

“This has an influence on Israeli society too,” Siniora said, “because for the first time they see the only way to resolve the conflict ... is to show Israel how impossible we can make their lives.”

On Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast, on green hills overlooking a vast stretch of blue sea near the city of Caesarea, social worker Omri Frish treats Israeli soldiers who have been rattled by their war experience. Most have turned to drugs; some have attempted suicide.

When Frish opened the Kfar Izun center two years ago, most patients were veterans of Israel’s long war in Lebanon; today, more and more arrive with what the staff is beginning to refer to as intifada syndrome.

One former soldier had jumped out of his car and pummeled a motorist who cut him off. Another beat up his girlfriend nightly. Others experience flashbacks.

With a small budget from the national drug agency and a handful of donations, the center has cared for 120 people in the last year and a half and fielded hundreds of phone consultations. Patients live at the facility, talk to therapists, act out their fears in group sessions seated outdoors under the orange sun. They partake in yoga, reflexology, acupuncture and kung fu.

Frish, 49, was a lieutenant colonel in an army combat unit and continues to perform reserve duty.

He recalled driving home from duty with a younger officer recently and stopping at a gas station. The younger officer was very aggressive with the station attendant until Frish called him on it.

“He caught himself and said, ‘Whoa, I didn’t make the switch,’ ” Frish said. “This isn’t Lebanon, where you have a five-hour drive home. These are the territories. You drive out, and 10 minutes later you’re in [the Israeli city of] Netanya, with the uniform, the gun and the attitude. You haven’t had time to make the mental switch yet.”

Israelis and Palestinians agree that the urgency of the daily military confrontation relegates domestic violence to the back burner.

Palestinians say that with all catalysts for change in their society squelched, they are obliged to pay homage to the national struggle over the battle for individual rights. Israelis voice similar complaints.

Yael Dayan, daughter of legendary military commander Moshe Dayan and a legislator who heads the Israeli parliament’s committee on the status of women, said the conflict is often used as an excuse.

“When I go to the budget committee for shelters or more social workers, they tell me, ‘Listen, we are at war, forget about it, we have other priorities,’ ” she said. “Security puts domestic violence in an inferior position.”

To the detriment of both societies.

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Batsheva Sobelman of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.