Examining LGBTQ+ Human Rights in Palestine and the Occupied Territories

On October 7, 2022, the severed head and decapitated body of 25 year-old Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh was found in the city of Hebron in the West Bank.

Abu Murkhiyeh was found near his family home, nestled in a conservative community which he tried to escape from two years prior. After his death, Israel provided a shaped narrative on his story, citing the Palestinian territories. Rita Petrenko, the founder of Al Bait Al Mokhtalef, an Israeli organization for Arab gay rights, recalled meeting Abu Murkiyeh and depicted a picture of how he was treated.

Abu Murkhiyeh was banned from working until last July when Israel finally began granting work permits to Palestinians who have sought refuge due to violence and persecution for their sexual orientation. While his story has been co-opted by several pro-Israeli activist groups, the discourse following his death depicts a picture of the current state of LGBTQ+ rights and activism in the West Bank.

Currently, nearly 92% of the population in the West Bank identifies as Muslim while the remaining identifies as Arab Christian. Homosexuality is still a taboo topic in the region and is often brushed aside in discourse, replaced by conversations pertaining to the relative Palestinian struggle. While we can all agree that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights, first and foremost, and must be part of the discussion no matter the circumstance, it is imperative to contextualize the status of this conversation in the events occurring within the region. As Palestinians are being uprooted from their homes, forced to flee and seek refuge in neighboring countries, the discourse regarding homosexuality is pushed to the back burner which is incredibly dangerous for the LGBTQ+ population within the region.

Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law, but Israel continues to expand them, without criticism or repercussions from the international community. Palestinians living in these areas face regular harassment and violence from settlers, and their homes and property are often destroyed. Additionally, Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories face discrimination in various forms, including restrictions on their freedom of movement, unequal access to services such as healthcare and education, and discrimination in employment and housing as well as restrictions on practicing their religion freely. Even during Ramadan, we can see the restrictions imposed on Palestinians to practice their religion freely, including restricting their access to Al-Aqsa Mosque during the holiest month of the year.

As we develop an understanding of the current state of Palestinian rights, we can begin to understand the life of the LGBTQ+ community in Palestine and how the occupation has affected their livelihood. Rhetoric employed by the international community has an immense impact on the way Palestine is perceived internationally and has implications for foreign assistance. Pinkwashing can be defined as the intentional misrepresentation of human rights through an allusion of the promotion of LGBTQ+ rights as evidence of democracy. Often utilized by Israel in promoting anti-Palestinian rhetoric, it portrays a dishonest view of the current status of LGBTQ+ rights. 

This connects to a broader issue of Israel, as well as other countries, exploiting the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights in order to gain political gain while hiding their oppressive policies in violation of international law against Palestinians. The right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu appropriated LGBTQ+ rights to advance its own agendas against Iran and the Palestinian Territories at the United Nations, depicting a picture of Israel as a gay-friendly, progressive, democratic country that protected human rights, as opposed to the other homophobic Middle Eastern nations, completely ignoring the immense atrocities LGBTQ+ community members have faced in Israel as well. Netanyahu also supports a myriad of parties and organizations internationally that infringe upon the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.

While Israel is often depicted as a safe country for the queer community, recent instances of hatred or violence may demonstrate how that might not be the full picture. On July 30 2015, Shiri Banka, a 16-year-old high school student, became one of six people stabbed at the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade by an ultra-Orthodox Jew named Yishai Schlissel, who had carried out a similar attack on a gay pride parade in 2005. Banka’s death demonstrates the ongoing struggle for acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community in a country proclaiming they are a safe haven for the community.

This discourse begs the question of what is the lived reality of LGBTQ+ individuals in the occupied territories and whether or not it is relatable to the rest of the Arab world. In "This Arab is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers" published by Saqi in 2022, editor Elias Jahshan attempts to give agency to 18 queer Arab writers by entrusting them with the task of narrating their own stories and experiences. This anthology represents an effort to reclaim control over the subject matter and challenge prevailing stereotypes and misconceptions of the single story that the Arab world does not accept homosexuality.

Jahsan’s work delves deeper into the queerness of people and culture in the Arab world which has been historically present but concealed by feelings of guilt and shame brought about by colonialism, the impact of which is felt in most formerly colonized countries. 

Throughout the last few decades, Palestine and the occupied territories have seen a slow but steady effort to support the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community, while rising against the occupation. In July 2020, Julia Zaher, CEO of Al Arz tahini company, made an announcement stating that a portion of the company's profits would be contributed towards the establishment of an LGBTQ helpline for Arabs. This initiative was to be undertaken in collaboration with Aguda, which is Israel's LGBT Task Force. While she received backlash from conservative communities, much of the discontent was from the LGBTQ+ community themselves, who disagreed with the fact that Zaher had donated to an Israeli group. They contended that she should have contributed the funds to Al Qaws, an organization in Jerusalem that promotes the rights of the Palestinian LGBT community across the Green Line. 

Al Qaws offers assistance to queer Palestinians who do not desire to engage with Israeli non-governmental organizations, and adopts a firm political stance against the occupation while supporting the Palestinian national movement. This sparks the discourse of how Palestinians can uplift the LGBTQ+ community while resisting the occupation and subjecting themselves to the pinkwashing that plagues the international community.

Currently, the city of Haifa has fostered an LGBTQ subculture with a Palestinian nationalist demeanor, where Israelis are not welcomed, demonstrating a resistance to the occupation while advocating for the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community.

The 2020 data of the Global Barometers of Gay Rights for Israel classifies the country as a C with a grade of 78% while the Global Barometer for Transgender Rights is at 65%. As we look at the GBGR and GBTR data for Israel, we can recognize that the score is significantly higher than the regional score of the MENA region. But do these protections really apply to Palestinians in the occupied territories?