It seems that anyone who has participated in online discussions on the Palestinian case has met with the claim that Palestinians are dropping gays from buildings (or in another fancy way they deprive them of their lives). This belief dates back to the time erstwhile the films of spectacular ISIS violence (which indeed threw gays off buildings and led an interesting legal dispute with the Taliban about how these executions should be carried out in a corrupt manner). However, Hamas is not ISIS, both groups are highly hostile to each another due to the fact that Hamas' national liberation ambitions conflict with the politics of jihadist groups, which consider nationalism incompatible with Islam. ISIS besides accuses the Gaza authorities of failing to bring Sharia law into their territory.
Without any intention of applauding Hamas' retroactive and violent social policy or the repression of LGBT+ by the Palestinian Authority's services, I will effort to clarify the legal criminalization of homosexuality in Palestine. The task is not facilitated by the fact that there is no single penal code in Palestine. due to the fragmentation of its territory and the different fates of the various parts of the West Bank, the Jordanian Criminal Code of 1960 is now being applied, and the British Code of 1936 is being applied in Gaza.
Homosexuality in Gaza
At the time of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in Palestine, Ottoman codes of substantive and procedural criminal law were binding, resulting from the nineteenth century improvement and inspired by the codification of the Napoleonic period. erstwhile mandate territories were established, including the British Mandate of Palestine, Palestine decided to replace Ottoman law with a penal code originally designed for Egypt. The fresh Penal Act, introduced during the arabian uprising in the Mandate, served as a tool to deal with subversive plots, which were punished by it highly severely. Types of prohibited acts were mostly derived from English law, and the code itself is akin to laws introduced in east Africa and Cyprus.
The British Penal Act for the Palestinian Mandate remained in force until 1977 besides in Israel. This code is the only 1 in Palestine whose legislature expressed interest in homosexuality in a legal criminal context. Article 152(2) criminalises sexual relations (the word utilized is characteristic of the British codes of the period carnal knowledge) with any individual ‘against nature’. This crime is punishable by a conviction of up to 10 years.
The historical explanation of this provision, the variations of which have occurred in British law in various places around the world, leads us to conclude that the legislator, erstwhile writing about "relationships against nature", means homosexual relations between men, although any creative lawyers, specified as Dr. Anis Kassim, claim that it is possible to interpret a code that does not criminalize gay sex. In this way, with the likewise resounding, obsolete Article 534 on "contrary relations", Sometimes the courts in Lebanon manage, ruling that consensual sex between adults is always natural.
Homosexuality is not in Gaza, according to the letter of law, punishable by death. In 2013, Hamas presented a draft of a fresh penal code, which was based on Sharia law and kept the penalties derived from it, but was unpopular adequate that it was not implemented. However, it should be considered to what degree the current authorities feel bound by the 1936 colonial code.
According to the Human Dignity Trust there is not much evidence that regulation 152(2) is in use. However, we know that the members of al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, committed political murders without respect to the law being laid down. 1 of the most celebrated cases is Kazus Mahmouda Ishtiwi, murdered in 2016. The commander of the Zeitoun Battalion was to be charged with homosexual relations with his neighbour and collaboration with Israel. He was besides accused of embezzlement of Brigade al-Qassam funds and profiting from his wife's prostitution. Ishtiwi confessed to any of the charges, but given that he was tortured, his evidence should not be considered besides reliable.
On the another hand, the interior spiritual court of the Brigade al-Qassam was to treat them as credible, condemning Ishtiwi to death. Due to the deficiency of any transparency of the military court, it is hard to say how many specified cases have occurred. surely Hamas members are highly hostile to gays in their ranks and not just due to spiritual fundamentalism. They frequently presume in advance that homosexual men have been recruited by Israeli intelligence, whose known course of action for decades is to blackmail non-heteronormative Palestinians by revealing their orientation.
Thus homophobia present in conservative Palestinian society is utilized by the occupation, giving fuel for further repression of the LGBT+ community. In particular, in a situation where a drinking run launched in 2005 Brand Israel Tel Aviv has long gained the position of 1 of the world's queer capitals, LGBT+ movements appear to the Palestinians as a manifestation of hostile imperial propaganda which must be fought and which cannot be separated from the violent actions of the Israeli army.
Homosexuality in the West Bank
The modern European recipient may be amazed to learn that, at a time erstwhile the criminalizing homosexuality of the British Code of 1936 continued in Israel, relations between men were depenalized in the West Bank by the power of the 1951 Jordanian Code. Although in 1953 the Israeli lawyer General advised against being held accountable on the basis of the sodomy regulations, and in 1963 the ultimate Court ruled out their application to consensual adult relations, Israel officially decriminized homosexuality only in 1988.
This state of affairs for any authors is 1 of the arguments for the thesis that pre-19th century in any Muslim regions comparative tolerance for non-heteronormativeism was replaced by hostility in part by the influence of Victorian colonial patterns, which later encountered intensely promoted by Saudi Arabia by fluctuating movements, based on a strict and literal explanation of the orders of Islam.
The Jordanian Criminal Code in force in the West Bank in its 1960 version is modelled on the Syrian Code, which is again derived from the already mentioned Ottoman Criminal Law, inspired by strong French legislation, with elements of muslim law. In 2003, a fresh unified Penal Code for Palestine was proposed, which criminalized relations between men, but the draft has never been implemented. As a result, a single code that criminalises homosexuality in Palestine remains a nearly centennial British colonial bill.
No pride in genecide
The LGBT+ situation in Palestine is not easy. At the same time, Israeli propaganda has long been eager to usage homophobic attacks to justify its actions in illegally occupied Palestinian territories. Benjamin Netanyahu speaking in the U.S. legislature heated up the right-wing meme, mocking the “Queery for Palestine” movement and comparing it to “Chickens for KFC”.
It is impossible to pretend that Palestinian society has no problem with homosexuality. Sa’ed Atshan, author of the book Queer Palestine, warns against the blindness of any anti-imperial movements to Palestinian homophobia and points out that, according to a 2019 poll, 95% of Palestinians find homosexuality unacceptable. In 2017, Palestinian author Abbad Yahya had to emigrate after receiving death threats related to his book Crime in Ramallah, In which there was a scene of oral sex between men. author Jouman Haddad then recalled consciously that 1 of the most crucial arabian poets, Abu Nawas, making up at the turn of the 8th and 9th centuries, wrote countless erotic poems about his homosexual experiences – unfortunately, despite this rich tradition, queerness remains a taboo subject in Palestine.
However, despite the persecution homosexuals face, for any reason in terms of genocide and occupation, both the western leftist collectives mocked by Netanyahu and Palestinian queer organizations, specified as Al Qaws, talk with 1 voice – they do not agree to usage LGBT+ in Palestine to sow propaganda of a violent occupier.
On November 13, 2023, an authoritative Israeli Instagram profile posted a photograph of a soldier standing in front of a tank holding
. The signature reads: “The first Pride flag in Gaza! Yoav Atzmoni, who is simply a associate of the LGBTQA+ community, with a message of hope for Gazans experiencing Hamas brutality". In the second image we see an IDF soldier against the background of ruins, holding a rainbow flag with the inscription “In the name of love”.
For the next 2 years, we continued to watch the audiences of this message of hope being “in the name of love” torn apart by Israeli bombs and burned alive in tents. Their body harnesses were collected for plastic bags so that families could bury anything. We listened to the evidence of doctors, who received the baby from a headless body, and saw tens of respective years of children killed with precise sniper bullets. We watched deliberately murdered journalists, doctors, humanitarian workers.
The rainbow post on Israel's profile is 1 of the darkest messages of this war. This is besides a blow to the Palestinian queer community, whose symbolism and identity were cynically utilized by the occupier at the threshold of 1 of the top crimes of this decade.
