(New York Times)- - Discriminatory laws, traditional practices and a severe shortage of emergency shelters combine to perpetuate violence against women by their family members and intimate partners in the Palestinian territories, according to a report to be issued on Tuesday by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group.

The report, based on interviews over the last year with victims, police officers, social workers and officials of the Palestinian Authority, says that while there is “increasing recognition of the problem” of violence against women and girls, “little action has been taken to seriously address these abuses.”

In fact, the report says, “there is some evidence that the level of violence is getting worse, while the remedies available to the victims are being further eroded.”

The report acknowledges that there is a significant lack of comprehensive data on the scale of violence. Even so, studies and statistics compiled by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and by women’s groups, many of them aided from abroad, “record high levels of violence perpetrated by family members and intimate partners, aggravated during times of political violence,” the report states,

The offenses include domestic violence, rape, incest, child abuse and violent responses to so-called “honor crimes,” like adultery, that embarrass the clan, family or community.

The report says that laws left over from the days before the 1967 war when Jordan ruled the West Bank and Egypt administered Gaza fail to fully protect the rights of female victims, the report says.

For instance, it notes, the laws call for reduced penalties in cases where men kill or harm female relatives who have committed adultery; they allow only male relatives to file incest charges on behalf of minors; and they absolve rapists from criminal prosecution if they agree to marry their victims for three years.

Moreover, rape laws in the Palestinian territories distinguish between virgin and non-virgin victims. Husbands are allowed to divorce wives simply by saying so, while wives must obtain a judicial divorce, and can only initiate proceedings on the basis of inflicted harm.

The report also says that, given the traditions of male authority in Middle Eastern culture and the enclosed nature of the communities, it is difficult for a female victim to seek redress or help with any guarantee of privacy. Those who go public with complaints to the police or the courts sometimes put themselves in more danger from an embarrassed family or clan. With respect to the victims of sex crimes and abuse, the report says, the system “prioritizes the reputations of their families in the community over their own well-being and lives.”

So police officers, who lack sophisticated legal options, and clan leaders, who try to protect family reputations, “regularly ‘mediate’ and ‘resolve’ these cases, typically by returning the abused women to the ‘care and protection’ of her attacker, without ever referring the case to the courts or the woman to social or other services she might need,” the report says.

There are few women’s shelters in the West Bank, and none in Gaza. Some women who need the protection of such shelters are put in women’s prisons instead, despite regulations that authorize the police to detain only those who are subject to a court order.

The report, called “A Question of Security: Violence against Palestinian Women and Girls,” notes carefully that the Palestinian Authority is not a sovereign state, that the West Bank is under Israeli occupation and that the current fighting with Israel, which intensified in 2000, has only weakened the sway and reduced the resources of the Palestinian administration and police.

Still, the report urges the Palestinian Authority to overhaul existing laws or adopt new ones that define violence within families as criminal, and repeal provisions that perpetuate or condone such violence. It calls for surveys of the rate of violence against women, for government-run hotlines and additional shelters, for training and guidelines for the police, health-care and social workers and the courts on how to handle crimes of abuse, and for a program of public education.

Most important, the report says, is for the Palestinian Authority to pursue crimes commmitted against women and girls with “effective investigations and prosecutions.”

The report also urges Israel to ease travel restrictions for judges, emergency workers and social service providers, and to help Palestinian victims of abuse to use shelters in Israel, including those used by Arab citizens of Israel.

“The problem is that no one sees this abuse as a crime,” said Lucy Mair, a researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch who is one of the authors of the report. “It’s seen as a family or social problem, and some behavior is not even criminalized.”

The difficulties created by the current political situation, including travel restrictions and a cutoff of Western budget support and other funds to a Palestinian Authority led by Hamas, she notes, “has led to the deterioration of existing institutions, erodes available remedies and makes the situation worse.”