State's witness: Palestinians won't employ caregivers

Palestinians will never bring a stranger home - certainly not a woman - to help out with the house work. That would be "a serious violation of Islamic tenants," which can end in murder over "family honor." Women in the territories do not wear pants, do not drive in cars alone, and do not work outside their home without some family supervision.

Or so the State of Israel thinks, based on the testimony of an "expert witness" on its behalf, at a court hearing on the compensation due a Palestinian injured by Israel Defense Forces gunfire during the first intifada.

The "expert witness" is Moshe Elad, colonel (res.) and a former senior official in the civil administration in the territories. He was asked to testify on whether it was necessary to authorize someone to help the wounded Palestinian, Azem Daher from Jenin, with his daily needs. Attorney Aharon Landgerten, representing the state, invited Elad to testify although he isn't an expert on the Middle East or social work, and the last time he visited Jenin was a decade ago.

The case begins in early 1991, when Daher was wounded by a bullet in the head as he drove near his home. Two years ago, a Supreme Court ruling ordered that compensation be paid to Daher because the IDF operation, in which he was shot, did not qualify as a "combat operation."

The case returned to the Jerusalem District court to determine the amount of the compensation. Daher is represented in the case by attorney Hussein Abu Hussein.

Two experts, psychiatrist Yirmiyahu Harel, from the Tel Aviv University School of Medicine, and Dr. Ibrahim Mahajna, who holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Social Work at Hebrew University, examined Daher and concluded that his head injury caused severe damage to his ability to function. As such, the experts concluded that Daher requires someone who can accompany him several hours every day, assist him in communicating with his family, and in carrying out simple tasks like walking to the bank, to the clinic - things he cannot do on his own.

As part of the deliberations, the state presented the court with the opinion of Elad, who had served as governor of Jenin and Bethlehem during his service in the civil administration. Since leaving the army, Elad has often worked as a commentator on Palestinian affairs to various media services.

In his Curriculum Vitae, which Elad presented to the court, he says he holds a B.A. in Middle Eastern History from Tel Aviv University and has "graduated" from a number of courses offered by the Civil Service and the IDF whose subject was "society and population of the territories."

In his opinion to the court, Elad was vociferous in his opposition to allowing someone to assist Daher. Elad maintains that "on the basis of his many years working in the territories" he has learned that "the code of behavior forbids" allowing a stranger, who is not a family member into the house as a caregiver because this "contravenes the norms of Islam." He also said that when Palestinian men and women work as caregivers in homes for the elderly or in rehabilitation centers, they do this without their communities knowing about it.

Elad maintained that only in life-threatening situations is a doctor allowed to enter a private home, and noted this was irrelevant in Daher's case.

"A strange man, who would be in the home of the Daher family, will be immediately suspected of contact with a woman who is not his wife," Elad writes. On the other hand, a woman who works in the family's home may lose her chance to marry and may even "endanger her life because she may be accused of violating family honor."

Elad repeated similar statements during his testimony to the Jerusalem District court, and though he admitted not have been in Jenin since 1998, he insisted that he has "never seen a woman wearing pants in Jenin."

Admitting that he is not an expert on the Koran, Elad said that his statements on the ban on strange men in the house is based on "religious rulings of Muslim scholars as far back as the 16th century." The court asked to see these rulings by the middle of October.

Dr. Mahajna challenged Elad's conclusions, saying that in Palestinian society in the West Bank it is perfectly acceptable to have strangers as caregivers for the handicapped in private homes. For his part, Abu Hussein presented the court with statistics from the National Insurance Institute which shows that the law on nursing is applied within Muslim communities in Israel with nearly the same frequency as in Jewish communities.