The Efficacy of Israeli Law in Preventing Violence Within Palestinian Families Living in Israel
| Author | Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian |
| DOI | 10.1177/026975800000700304 |
| Date | 01 January 2000 |
| Published date | 01 January 2000 |
Domestic
Violence:
Global
Responses,
pp.
47-66
©
2000
A B
Academic
Publishers
Printed
in
Great
Britain
THE
EFFICACY
OF
ISRAELI
LAW
IN
PREVENTING
VIOLENCE
WITHIN
PALESTINIAN
FAMILIES
LIVING
IN
ISRAEL
NADERA
SHALHOUB-KEVORKIAN*
School
of
Social
Work,
Institute
of
Criminology,
Faculty
of
Law,
Hebrew
University
of
Jerusa-
lem,
Mount
Scopus,
Jerusalem,
Israel
ABSTRACT
Changes
in
public
attitudes
to
violence
have
given
rise
to
debates
about
the
proper relationship
between
gender,
violence
and
the
role
of
the
State.
This
study
of Palestinians living
in
Israel
examines
the
appropriateness
of
formal
legal
interventions
in
spousal
assault
cases
for
a
community
with
different
cultural
values,
including
a
mistrust
of
state
intervention
and
the
legal
order.
Structured
interviews
with
welfare
professionals
in
55
cases
of
spousal
assault
reveal
that, contrary
to
the
aims
of legislation
designed
to
assist
and
support
women,
the
law
has
had
the
paradoxical
effect
of
further
victimizing
those
very
women
seeking
to
rely
on
it.
The
Palestinian
experience
suggests
that
legal
interventions
need
to
be
understood
as
complementing
rather
than
substituting
for
more
culturally
sensitive
community
responses
to
spousal
assault.
The
paper
advocates
raising
the
awareness
of
agents
of
social
control
about
factors
which
hinder
or
promote
the
use
of
legal
remedies.
Increasing public awareness of the problem
of
family violence has led to a new
found willingness by the state to accept responsibility for dealing with spousal
assault. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed the development
of
legal responses to
wife assault in most post-industrialized societies (Endicott, 1987; Pence, 1989;
Jaffe and Burris, 1984). Conflicting discourses about the relationship between
gender and violence on the one hand, and the effectiveness
of
the law on the other
have, however, led to controversies about the most effective strategies to help
victims
of
spousal assault. Alongside the use
of
traditional legal sanctions,
various alternative models
of
intervention have been advocated including the
feminist, therapeutic, and domestic violence models (Loseke and Cahile, 1984;
Pleck, 1987; Straus et al., 1980).
In this paper, I consider the debate about the most appropriate model
of
intervention in spousal assault
in
light of the contemporary women's movement's
interrogation
of
the complex relationship between gender, violence, and the state.
I first address the general problem
of
invoking legal remedies to deal with the
*
Correspondence:
Dr.
Nadera
Shalhoub-Kevorkian,
Institute
of
Criminology,
Faculty
of
Law,
Hebrew
University,
Jerusalem,
Israel.
48
problem of
wife
assault.
I
then
apply
these
considerations
to
a
case
study
of
the
problem of relying
on
legal interventions
to
deal
with
spousal
abuse
in
the
special
circumstances of Palestinians resident
in
the
State of
Israel.
An
empirical inves-
tigation of
welfare
agency
responses
to
women
experiencing
serious
abuse
within
this
community
highlights the cultural
and
practical limitations of
main-
stream
legal
approaches
to
spousal
assault
for
disadvantaged
and
disaffected
ethnic communities.
Finally,
I consider
the
need
for
professionals
to
address
consciously the
factors
which
hinder
or
promote
the
use
of
law
in
communities
with
cultural resistance
to
state
intervention
in
order
to
develop
appropriate,
individuated
and
creative strategies
to
help
women.
DEINSTITUTIONALIZING WIFE
ASSAULT
Historically,
the
abuse
of
women
and
children
was
socially
acceptable
(Brown
et
al.,
1971).
The
traditional
legacy
of
social
conditioning
and
economic
domina-
tion
by
men
not
only
dramatically
affected
the
position
of
women
and
children,
but
was
also
institutionalized
in
law
and
legal
institutions
(Kanowitz,
1969).
Legal
policies
assured
male
dominance
in
the
home
(Cavanagh,
1971).
For
example,
until
the
nineteenth
century,
English
law
accepted
the
right
of
husbands
to
beat their
wives
(Dobash
and
Dobash,
1979).
Historical
laws
reflected
so-
ciety's tolerance
and
acceptance of
wife
assault
(Macleod,
1987;
Schechter,
1982).
Early legal
and
court
decisions
provided
a
variety
of rationalisations
to
support
wife
assault.
The
legal
focus
was
on
how
much
violence
was
permissible
rather
than
whether it
was
appropriate.
With
the
growth
and
strength
of
the
women's
movement
in
the
mid
1960s,
abuse
and
assault of
women
became
a
public
social
issue.
Research
on
the
oppression of
women
and
the
various
forms
of
inequality
experienced
by
them
led
to
specific
reforms
in
social
policy
and
legislation.
It
was
not
until
the
70s
and
80s
however,
that
laws
were
passed
in
the
U.S.
to
protect
women
victims
of
spousal physical assault
(Leman
and
Livingstone,
1983).
These
legal
remedies
recognized
the
criminal nature of
wife
battering
and
were
designed
to
promote
more
effective responses
from
the
police,
prosecutors,
and
judges
(Eisenberg
and
Micklow,
1977).
Legal
intervention
in
family
violence,
particularly
wife
assault,
is
complicated
by
the
fact
that it
touches
on
private, ideological,
and
historical
forms
of
oppress-
ion
and
exploitation.
Much
of
the
literature
in
the
West,
for
example,
has
claimed
that
legal
remedies are
less
accessible
to
victims
of
wife
assault
than
to
victims
of other
forms
of
violence.
In dealing
with
spousal
assault,
the
traditional
moral
double
standard implicit
in
the criminal
and
legal
process
complicates
calls
for
greater
legal
intervention
(Smart,
1976).
For
most
women,
the
first encounter
with
legal
authorities
comes
after
the
batterer
has
become
very
cruel,
extremely
violent,
and
potentially
lethal
(Ellis,
1987).
Mahoney
(1996)
suggests
that,
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