Gaza – Widows Are Fighting for Their Families’ Lives

As Israel’s war against Hamas rages on, Palestinian women bear the heaviest burden.

By Neha Wadekar, a Nairobi-based journalist, and Ruwaida Amer, a reporter and video producer in the Gaza Strip.

JANUARY 12, 2024 – GAZA—As bombs rain down on Gaza, Maryam Abu Akar has managed to escape death twice. But her loved ones have not. Maryam’s 17-year-old daughter, Sarah, was killed when a bomb landed on their two-story home on Oct. 17—ripping the teenager’s body in half.

In the wake of Sarah’s death, Maryam relied on her husband, Salama, for support. “He helped me bear the loss of my daughter. He told me that everything would be better and that our daughter went to heaven,” the 40-year-old said in an interview in her husband’s family home in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza.

Seven weeks later, Salama was chatting with a neighbor when a bomb landed nearby, killing them both. In an instant, Maryam became a widow—and the sole caregiver for their remaining four children. She is far from alone. Thousands of women in Gaza have been widowed by the war or left in charge of households, and aid experts fear that their worsening plight is being overlooked in the humanitarian response.

“I do not know how I will face his absence and raise the children without him,” Maryam said, tears streaming down her pallid cheeks. “Sometimes, when the children make me angry, I tell them: ‘I will call your father.’ And then I remember that he is not here.”

Maryam’s late daughter and husband are among more than 23,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since early October—with about 70 percent of the victims estimated to be women and children—according to CARE International, a global humanitarian organzation.

On Oct. 7, the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people—mainly civilians—and taking more than 240 hostage, according to Israeli figures. Growing evidence is emerging of widespread sexual violence by the Hamas attackers against Israeli women and girls.

Israel responded to the attack with a massive bombing campaign in Gaza that has resulted in the highest civilian death toll in the long-running conflict since 2005. More than 2,780 women in Gaza have been widowed, data from U.N. Women Arab States shows. With at least 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents displaced and food, fuel, medicine, and water scarce, these newly female-headed households are struggling to cope, several humanitarian organizations said.

These women not only have to contend with a deeply rooted patriarchal society and systemic legal inequities, but they are now increasingly vulnerable to gender-based violence, unable to support themselves and their families, and lack access to organizations that can help them—be it with food, safe shelter, or health care, several aid experts said.

“Most of the burden will be on the women,” said Lucy Talgieh, head of the women’s program at the Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center, a civil society organization based in Bethlehem. “They have to be strong—to live, and to help their children, and to start a new life, maybe with an injured husband who has become disabled, or maybe as a widow with four to five children to care for.”

LAWS IN GAZA PLACE WOMEN under the protection and guardianship of men, and fail to protect female citizens against honor killings, marital rape, and domestic violence, the United Nations said in a 2018 report.

A woman can lose her right to spousal maintenance if she chooses to leave her husband’s home, and in 2021, a Hamas-run Islamic court ruled that women need the permission of men to travel in Gaza.

Although female literacy rates are high in Gaza, only 17 percent of women were active in the workforce as of 2021, compared to 69 percent of men, data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics shows.

In 2017, Gaza had the world’s highest unemployment rate at 44 percent, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Most women in Gaza have never had a formal job, and now, even if they could work, there are virtually no opportunities available because of the war.

At least two-thirds of jobs in Gaza have been lost since the war started—roughly 192,000 jobs—the International Labour Organization said in late December, warning that women working in agriculture could lose out if rising unemployment results in men taking their jobs.

Maryam married at 20 and never finished university. She has been a housewife almost her entire adult life and was financially dependent on her late husband, who earned about $9 a day selling clothes in a market.

“I got used to relying on him to raise my children. He was the only breadwinner for us,” Maryam said. “I am not accustomed to bearing the responsibility alone. I do not know how I will continue the path with my children.”

For Gaza’s widows, grief and the trauma of war are compounded by the challenge of suddenly becoming the sole breadwinner, aid workers said.

WUNRN

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/12/gazas-widows-are-fighting-for-their-families-lives/