A female student from the Lower Galilee was stabbed on Monday in the dormitories of the American University in Jenin, according to the Red Crescent EMT service. The student, 19, from Uzeir, was evacuated to Jenin’s a-Razi hospital in critical condition. According to doctors, she had a deep gash in her lungs and was being operated on.
Witnesses told Ha’aretz that the student’s father was arrested on suspicion of stabbing his daughter.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority police said that several suspects had been arrested.
One female student told Ha’aretz she had heard shouts from the street when she was in her room in the dormitories. She saw the wounded woman running outside the building crying for help, and a man pursuing and catching her. A crowd gathered and soon she saw the victim lying on the pavement.
The American University in Jenin is considered a prime destination for many Israeli Arabs, who live in rented apartments in the city or in the student dormitories.
Honor killing is used against a member of one’s family, usually female, by a relative, usually male, who believes that she has brought dishonor upon the family, usually for reasons such as refusing to enter an arranged marriage, being in a relationship that is disapproved by the family, having premarital sex, becoming the victim of rape, dressing in ways which are deemed inappropriate, engaging in non-heterosexual relations or renouncing her faith.
The Palestinian Authority, using a clause in the Jordanian penal code still in effect there, exempts men from punishment for killing a female relative if she has brought dishonor to the family, although PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has abolished the exemption in May 2014. According to UNICEF estimates in 1999, two-thirds of all murders in the Palestinian Authority were likely honor killings.
It is estimated that an average of 40 honor killings a year are carried out in the Israeli Arab community.