Palestinian police arrested a suspect in the brutal killing of a Palestinian gay activist last week, as he continues to ensnare LGBTQ Palestinians in Israel.
Police spokesman Colonel Loay Irzekat announced on October 7 that the government had arrested Palestinian Abu Murkhiyeh on suspicion of murdering gay Palestinian Ahmad Hacham Hamdi Abu Marakhia, 25, the BBC reported.
Irzekat declined to give a reason or the main points of the men’s relationship, which brought up the authorities’ ongoing investigation.
Marakhia was beheaded and brutally beaten in Hebron, a Palestinian town in the southern West Bank, where his family lives. The video captured his lifeless body parading through the streets of the city. The family home expired on the night of October 5. Video and footage of the incident went viral on social media on October 6.
“I was shocked at how they killed him and how they posted him and percentage online,” Tomer Aldubi, 29, a gay Israeli Jewish artist and activist who has worked with LGBTQ Palestinians for many years and knew Marakhia, told the Bay Area. Reporter in a telephone interview on October 13.
Aldubi explained that other people know that there are LGBTQ Palestinians and that many of them live in the back of the closet or are killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but this is not shown or mentioned.
“This time is a little different,” he said, saying the Marakhia killings are more like those committed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, better known as ISIS, or Afghanistan’s Taliban, whose graphic photographs of the killings of suspected LGBTQ people are being released online. “It turns out everything was planned,” Aldubi added.
“That’s why he’s talking . . . in Palestinian society, in Israeli society,” he said.
Palestinians expressed revulsion at the beheading and condemned Marakhia’s murder.
A Karama radio host told the air that the crime had “crossed all the red lines of our society, in terms of morality, customs or fundamental humanity,” The Times of Israel reported.
Marakhia’s circle of relatives denied media reports that they had anything to do with his murder, calling it “the reason for a rumour,” the BBC reported. They told the media outlet that he had returned to Hebron to visit and work.
Some LGBTQ Israelis criticize Palestinian denunciations.
Aldubi said Palestinian activists, the government and Arabs living in Israel said they did not know if Marakhia killed because he was gay.
“They don’t necessarily condemn the fact that he was killed because he was gay,” he said. His friends and the organizations Marakhia worked with killed him because he was gay.
The bar reached out to several Palestinian and Jewish LGBTQ organizations in the Bay Area for comment, but got a response.
Fleeing to safety
Like many other gay Palestinians, Marakhia fled the West Bank for Israel two years ago because his life was threatened after his circle of relatives discovered he was gay.
Marakhia received transitional permits that allowed her to live and work legally in Israel while working for refugee prestige with the UN Refugee Agency in Israel. He’s next on the list to have an appointment with the agency, said Aldubi, who is also a volunteer. in Al-Bait Al-Mokhtalef (The Different House), an organization that works with LGBTQ Palestinians.
The Different House offers a haven for LGBTQ Palestinians and Israeli Arabs fleeing violence and discrimination.
“He couldn’t wait to leave the country. Next one,” Rita Petrenko, executive director of The Different House, told Israeli media outlet N12, emphasizing that emigration is the most productive option for LGBTQ Palestinians who are driven from their homes.
He lamented the snail-like speed of the resettlement process, which is longer today than in previous years, even as organizations like The Different House cooperate with countries’ governments, as the organization does with Canada. Policies lead to delays in the process.
Aldubi documented the plight of LGBTQ Palestinians for Fair Planet in 2020. His play, “Sharif,” which dramatizes what gay Palestinians face in their homeland and when they cross into Israel, premiered last month in Haifa. The coin is expected to travel to Israel, Aldubi said.
Aldubi and Petrenko said politics is Israel’s challenge at the UNHRC, LGBTQ-friendly governments like Canada. The documents are thick, resulting in a backlog of cases. COVID-19 has exacerbated the challenge.
“There is no explanation as to why he returns to the West Bank,” Aldubi said of Marakhia. He met Marakhia while leading a theater workshop for 15 LGBTQ Palestinians in Haifa several months ago. “Her life is not good, but she is safer than in the West Bank. “
Relatives of Aldubi and Marakhia suspect that a member of the family circle kidnapped and killed him. “It also seems, it’s certain that someone in his circle of relatives, one [or more] of his relatives killed him,” he said.
Israeli news site Mako reported that hours before his death, Marakhia left the Gush Dan shelter in Tel Aviv, where he was staying, to go to work.
A few hours later, he died in Hebron, more than miles from Tel Aviv.
Aldubi said that until 2014, LGBTQ Palestinians entered Israel, most commonly fleeing the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and lived undocumented in the country for decades. Remain legally in the country. Temporary licences must be renewed periodically.
“His life in Israel is very complicated. The solution for them is to leave,” Aldubi said.
Homosexuality has been legal in the Palestinian West Bank since 1951, according to Equaldex. The case is the same in the Gaza Strip, where homosexuality is illegal. However, LGBTQ Palestinians have no legal cover in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, where sex is taboo.
In 2019, the Palestinian Authority banned alQaws, a Palestinian LGBTQ rights organization based in East Jerusalem, from holding events in the West Bank.
Currently, about a hundred gay Palestinians live legally in Israel, Ibtisam Mara’ana-Menuhin, a Knesset member and Israeli Arab member of the Labor Party, told the AP. LGBTQ Arab shelters and pass the law allowing them to download painting permits. However, she and organizations that paint with the population believe the number is likely much higher.
Building a haven of peace
It wasn’t until July that Israel began granting transitional paintings to LGBTQ Palestinians, the AP reported. LGBTQ organizations, such as The Aguda and The Different House, have provided services, ranging from basic needs to legal assistance, also for gay Palestinians. as LGBTQ asylum seekers and refugees from neighboring countries for years.
Petrenko called Marakhia “a hardworking and intelligent man” and that “he was making normal progress in his rehabilitation,” he told N12.
Israel has only begun this year to be more proactive than before in supporting LGBTQ Palestinians. Earlier this year, Israel announced plans to open its first shelter for LGBTQI Arab youth in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa, the Jerusalem Post reported. Haifa is San The brother town of Francis.
Haifa was selected because it has a giant Arabic network. The Haifa House of Communities for Pride and Tolerance, the city’s LGBTQ hub, has been operating with the city’s queer Arab network since its founding, St. Franciscans told LGBTQ on one occasion in 2018. The B. A. R. previously reported.
The shelter initiative advocated through Mara’ana-Menuhin is overseen by Israel’s Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs. The branch told the Post it estimated the shelter would open in six months. The bar has not verified the opening of the shelter.
The ministry announced it would open two more centers for LGBTQ Arab adults in Haifa. The bar association got a response to its request for comment from the House of Community Pride and Tolerance before press time.
In June, Israel launched its largest LGBTQ Arab crusade nationwide through Beit el-Meem, an organization created to help LGBTQ Arabs in particular. Beit el-Meem is funded through the New Israel Fund, the Post reported.
The Post reported that the crusade is part of a larger task to find answers to LGBTQ Arabs in Israel, such as operating a hotline and offering general recommendations for legal assistance.
always dangerous
Even with Israel’s new efforts to protect LGBTQ Palestinians while bringing them to a position to live, they are not in Israel.
Aguda’s Hila Peer told the AP that Palestinian homosexuals are being “hunted. “They don’t come out of the closet, “they’re found,” Peer said.
“Ahmad’s case is just one example of the gravity of the scenario and its grave danger. “
Petrenko agreed, telling N12, “Israel is not a position for them, even without taking into account socioeconomic factors. “
Friends and organizations independently seek out what happened in Marakhia while comforting the small, frightened Palestinian LGBTQ community.
They are “shocked and very scared,” Aldubi said, especially Marakhia’s close friend who lived with him at the shelter. Aldubi revealed the call from Marakhia’s friend for security reasons.
“He is very scared because they know that all the Palestinians who are in Israel have fled the West Bank,” he said. “All of them are in wonderful danger. “
They are waiting to be resettled in a country that welcomes LGBTQ people, Aldubi said.
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