WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The number of cases of domestic violence against women in the Israeli-occupied territories jumped sharply from 688 in 2019 to 2,853 in 2020, a 315 percent spike, the Women’s International Zionist Organisation (WIZO) says.
Ynet News said WIZO’s annual report collected data from ministries, the comptroller’s office, the occupying regime’s police and the regime’s prison service.
It showed that 26 women were murdered in the occupied territories in 2020, compared to 17 in 2019; 13 at the hands of their partners, compared to five in 2019. Four of the 13 had previously filed complaints with police before they were murdered.
The report also found that 31.2 percent of the suspected murderers were already known to police.
Domestic violence hotline 118 also experienced a large surge in calls up from 2,286 in 2019 to 5,866 the following year, WIZO found.
“Everywhere you look, it’s as if someone has lit a fire,” Rivka Neumann, director of WIZO’s Division for the Advancement of Women, told the Media Line. “During [COVID-19] lockdowns women and children found themselves stuck inside homes with an abusive person.”
“There was no way for them to go outside and they couldn’t go to school or work,” Neumann said. “This combination of locking people indoors and being [in close proximity] to a violent man resulted in a rise in domestic violence cases.”