The Statements of the Accused to the Police and Evidence in Court: The Shift from the Communal to the Legal

The opening phase of the legal process was characterized by a shift from the community to the criminal justice system. The clearest demonstration of the shift can be seen by comparing the evidence given by the accused at court with his earlier statement to the police. The change in the perpetrator's story took various forms. In some cases the accused gave two different statements to the police, whereas in others he remained silent in the Magistrate's Court, as was his right, and presented his case only at the trial court. In all cases, the later statement was geared to showing provocation, which would rule out premeditated action. Therefore, the first statement given by the perpetrator upon his arrest was more likely to reveal his motivation: his drive to wipe out the conduct that he saw as marring the honor of the family, by killing his agnate relative (sister, cousin, or aunt). A second statement to the police, when such was given, tended to change the retelling of the event, so as to attribute much more significance to the immediacy of the provocation, portraying it as unexpected and unsuspected.

The portrayal of the event and the act changed by the time it reached the Court of Criminal Assize. The overall context of the event was not elaborated, but instead, the description focused on an immediate, unexpected, unsuspected provocation and its impact on the accused. This shift was meant to adjust the accused's statement to the rationale of the criminal code, in other words, to shift the emphasis from the overall context, in which the perpetrator's resolution evolved in a premeditated manner, to an immediate “provocation,” which would rule out the possibility of “cold blooded” premeditation.Footnote ⁴⁹

A number of examples will demonstrate the shifts made by the perpetrators in their presentation of their actions. Kamel Ahmed Hussein el-Majdoub gave two statements to the police. El-Majdoub admitted killing his aunt Jamal.Footnote ⁵⁰ In his first statement he described returning to the village from the army camp where he worked, and hearing that his aunt's husband had divorced her because of adultery; he then went to her house and killed her. In his second statement, 10 days later, he shifted from hearsay to eyesight. He omitted any prior information, and described his going to his aunt's to have a cup of coffee. Upon entering her hut, he recounted, he saw a man lying upon her. The sudden total surprise made his blood boil, and he acted on the spot. The change introduced by el-Majdoub turned his story into a typical narration of “provocation” and “hot blood.” He saw with his own eyes, he “lost his head”: as a result, and he used the instrument left behind by the adulterer rather than one he himself prepared or carried on him.

Atiyeh Faraj, as well, gave two statements to the police.Footnote ⁵¹ Immediately after his arrest he admitted to having killed his cousin Rifqa, but refused to give any explanation. Her parents described an ongoing conflict between Atiyeh and their daughter, because of her refusal to give any details concerning a man who had attacked Atiyeh's wife. Six days after his arrest, Atiyeh requested to make another statement to the police. In this statement he gave his version of what had happened between him and his cousin, which seemingly could justify his act or at least clarify it. He spoke of his total shock when, upon getting up at night to urinate, he saw, so he recounted, his married cousin Rifqa having intercourse with a stranger in a nearby backyard. The man escaped, and Faraj, whose blood was set boiling by this horrific sight, killed his cousin hardly knowing what he was doing. He stuck to this story in the trial court, which remained unconvinced.

Mahmoud Hassan el-Soury also attempted to add an element of sudden provocation to his testimony in the Court of Criminal Assize.Footnote ⁵² In his statement to the police, after killing his 17-year-old sister, he admitted to the act, and said that his sister had insisted on visiting their mother, who had remarried and moved elsewhere, in opposition to his adamant objection. By the time he gave evidence in the Court of Criminal Assize he recounted his suspicion lest his sister had a lover. When he arrived home from work, he told the court, he could not find his sister, and later that evening she would not tell him where she had been. The anger and suspicion provoked him into action, and he stabbed his sister numerous times. From a case of disobedience to the older brother's patriarchal authority, he devised a case that would, he hoped, fit the legal definition of provocation, which would preclude premeditation.

Finally, we shall elaborate on the case of Imkheibir Kataf, who significantly changed his detailed statement to the police when he gave a similarly detailed account to the Court of Criminal Assize.Footnote ⁵³ Imkheibir admitted to killing his cousin Tamam. She had left her husband in their village Ihrak in southern Syria and had gone to her brother, who lived on the outskirts of Jaffa, where her cousin Imkheibir and his brother also lived. After killing Tamam, Imkheibir escaped and was arrested the following day by police. In his first statement to the police he gave a detailed account of Tamam's behavior (according to him) in their village in Syria, of her immorality and of his threats and warnings. All the events, which he described in his statement to the police, had taken place (according to his account) way in advance of the incident for which he was charged.

Once Imkheibir and his cousin Ibrahim learned that Tamam had left her husband and gone to Jaffa, he continued to recount, he attempted to induce her to return, planning to kill her on the way, before reaching the village. Apparently aware of the danger, Tamam refused. Imkheibir then described how a female neighbor in Jaffa taunted him and told him of Tamam's intention to go to a brothel in Jaffa, and he continued

This statement would certainly fit a case of carefully premeditated murder. During the trial itself the accused changed his narrative. The whole social communal context was removed. He focused on the day of the event, described Tamam's coming to his hut to wash his clothes as a routine event (rather than a planned snare), and created in his narrative an unexpected and unsuspected provocation. This provocation would then be used according to the legal rationale, to claim that it caused him to lose his ability to calculate his actions properly, and that, therefore, he could not be accused of premeditated homicide (i.e., murder). According to his statement at court, Imkheibir left Tamam alone in his hut. When returning unexpectedly to his hut “….I saw it closed, I pulled the door and I broke the wire which fastened the door. When I entered I saw Muhammad Nimr having intercourse with the victim. I went off my head, drew my knife and wanted to kill Nimr who ran away. When he ran away I stabbed the victim […] When I saw Nimr having intercourse with the victim I became like a crazy man. I never thought of killing the victim. […] I was dizzy all the time and only ‘discovered’ myself in the Police station.”Footnote ⁵⁵

The accused changed his statement to achieve a tighter fit to the reasoning of the criminal code. This shift removed, to a major extent, the communal context, which was given some presence in the earlier statement, substituting it with a narrative that emphasized direct observation and sudden provocation arousing a passionate and uncontrollable response. Here as in the previous cases, the change in the account was constructed according to the logic of the criminal code, to enable the defendant to clear himself from the accusation of murder. It is interesting to note that judging from the minutes, neither the prosecution nor the court appear to have queried this discrepancy in the abovementioned cases. The perpetrator was not asked to present evidence during the trial that would substantiate the second statement as compared with the first, nor was he cross-examined on specific points in his earlier statements. The ruling did state that the court accepted one version over the other, but did not seem to find it necessary to elaborate the grounds for its decision.

The Judges of the Trial Court: The Court of Criminal Assize

In most cases, the judges, both British and Arab, remained soundly within the bounds of the legal definitions and criteria. The judges considered the evidence presented to them in relation to the criteria of premeditation to determine murder or manslaughter. The issue of honor, or more generally of customary codes, did not appear as a mitigating factor in the criminal code, and, therefore, the judges of the Court of Criminal Assize did not refer to them in their rulings. In the detailed ruling, the judges discussed the three conditions elaborated in Section 216 of the PCCO–1936 for a conviction for murder, and examined the extent to which the evidence presented to the court substantiated each of the three. They did not generalize from one subsection to another but considered it necessary to find evidence for each of the three requirements: (a) Resolution to kill; (b) Cold blood with no immediate provocation; and (c) Preparation to kill. The manner in which each of the requirements was interpreted is not of interest here, but the fact that these requirements were the concern of the court, on which it based its judgment, is. This may account for the detailed discussion of each requirement and the attempt to convincingly substantiate the court's decision.

The ethnic identity of the judges, an important factor in some respects, as discussed by Likhovski,Footnote ⁵⁶ does not appear to have played a consistent role in determining provocation, and hence manslaughter versus murder, as will be demonstrated in the following section. On no occasion did the Arab judges accept the story told by the accused, aimed at convincing the court that he had faced an immediate and surprising provocation. They were not more credulous than the British judges regarding the often unlikely situations constructed by the perpetrators. Nevertheless, the Arab judges were split regarding the appropriate sentence. In some cases they fully agreed with the British judges and accepted the judgment according to which lack of provocation meant murder and hence, capital punishment. In other cases some, although not all, of the Arab judges seem to have tried to avoid the sentence for murder, even while denying provocation. We suggest that, as expressed by Judge Daoudi, quoted subsequently, their understanding of the social pressure of tradition and custom under which the accused acted, led them to find legal outlets that would warrant the sentence of manslaughter rather than murder, thus avoiding capital punishment.

Muhammad Ahmad Salem Ishreim, who had killed both his mother-in-law and his wife, in the home of the wife's grandmother, attempted to claim that he had been provoked by hearing voices and by seeing two men in the house through the open door.Footnote ⁵⁷ The court remained unconvinced. After dismissing the latter possibility, the court examined each of the three required conditions. They concluded that the first condition 216 (a), the resolution to kill, was proven “beyond a shadow of a doubt” by the numerous and fatal knife stabs. Condition 216 (b), the lack of an immediate provocation, was also accounted for, as the judges accepted the grandmother's testimony that no men had been in her house at the time. Finally, 216 (c) required proof of preparation, which was provided, according to the judges, by the dagger held in the hand of the accused as he entered the grandmother's home. Therefore, rather than adopting the discourse of tradition and honor; for example, the abuse of honor of a husband whose wife had left home and gone to town for an extended period with her mother, they focused on the requirements of the Criminal Code. This approach was shared in this case by the two British judges, Randolph Copland and Bernard Vidal Shaw, and the Arab judge Francis Khayat. In the case of el-Soury mentioned previously,Footnote ⁵⁸ Judges Clive Currie, Clayton Rigby and Elias Khoury examined each of the requirements of Section 216 in a similar fashion: the numerous fatal stabs of the dagger indicated resolution to kill; the suspicion that the sister possibly had a lover was not considered by any of the judges to meet the criteria for provocation; and once again the dagger indicated preparation.

In another case, that against Ali Ibn Salameh Jadii, direct reference was made by the judges to “honor” and custom; however, these factors were not taken into account when elaborating the court's verdict. “Honor” was acknowledged by the court as a social reality. “We think that it is clear that the circumstances in which she [the murdered woman, the married cousin of the accused] went away with the other man, would be such as to raise the anger of her male relations, in that they would think that she had brought dishonour on them. She had no brother nor father, and the accused might well deem that the question of honour would fall upon him together with other members of the family.”Footnote ⁵⁹

Nevertheless, the possible sense of duty suggested by the court was not considered relevant to the court's decision. When deciding upon premeditated homicide, the court once again discussed the three requirements of Section 216, rather than any social custom or any communal pressure on the accused.Footnote ⁶⁰

A further variation of acknowledging custom and “honor,” while convicting according to the Criminal Code with no mitigating considerations, was the case heard by the District Court against Muhammad Hassan Said Shihadeh.Footnote ⁶¹ The case, in which the accused was convicted of “unlawfully causing the death of his sister,” demonstrates the manner in which the two Arab judges of the Jaffa District Court, Aziz Daoudi and Said Toukan, indirectly and implicitly referred to custom, but rejected it as a consideration for the court while deciding on conviction. Shihadeh claimed to have seen a man alone with his sister in her room. Although the judges knew that according both to Muslim lawFootnote ⁶² and custom,Footnote ⁶³ such a circumstance would be interpreted as indicating intimate sexual relations, they made no direct and explicit reference to this fact. They seem to be implying that the Legal Code did not include any such consideration, and that the Code alone was what determined their conviction. “The accused might have seen a certain person in his sister's room,” they wrote, “but that alone, that is seeing a stranger in his sister's room, does not justify killing his sister because the law in force does not allow him to do what he did […].”Footnote ⁶⁴ However, there were also variations on this point. In some cases, dissenting opinions of Arab judges did consider communal customs, tradition, or duties, as the defendants perceived them, to be relevant, even if only hesitantly, to their final decision.

The dissenting opinion in case of Fatmeh Tamam may serve as an illustration.Footnote ⁶⁵ The two brothers of the Infiat Bedouin tribe were accused of killing their sister, Fatmeh, in December 1932. After her husband had died, Fatmeh wanted to marry another member of the tribe, Ibrahim Jauhar, to whom her brothers strongly objected because he was black, and considered to be a servant or slave. She nevertheless continued her relationship with him, seeking to obtain the Shari'a court's endorsement of their marriage. Once she became pregnant, her brothers’ attitude became more threatening, and Fatmeh turned to the police for help. One day, when Fatmeh took her grain to the mill, her brothers allegedly attacked her and beat her to death with their clubs (naboot). Their claim that they had found her having intercourse with the “black Ibrahim,” was rejected by all judges, two British and two Arab, as totally unconvincing. The majority of the judges, two British and one Arab, convicted one of the brothers for murder.Footnote ⁶⁶ The judges stuck to the need to prove that the act was intended and planned, to which they referred in their ruling. “We believe that the accused carried the naboot and axe exhibited in court (weapons of a lethal nature) […] and that it was carried by accused that day with the intention and for the purpose for which we find that it was subsequently used. We are satisfied that prior to the crime the accused had given an undertaking to a Police Officer not to molest his sister. We are also satisfied that he had on the day of the murder or prior thereto formed the intention to commit the murder.”Footnote ⁶⁷

The dissenting opinion of Judge Aziz Daoudi is a complex document. He rejected the “provocation” described by the Tamam brothers, but was not satisfied that the killing of Fatmeh should be considered cold-blooded, intended, premeditated murder

Judge Daoudi's dissenting opinion conveyed his own dilemma and his understanding of the contrasting forces at play in Palestinian society. He himself considered the crime to be “grave and hideous.” The victim was pregnant, which meant that an unborn child was also killed. However, the act was not simply a heinous act. It was the outcome, he claimed, of a sharp clash between the European impact, which he assumed had affected Fatmeh, and the habits and codes that he considered to have had such a powerful hold over the perpetrator. The sentence, he claimed, should take this clash into account. Judge Daoudi did not want the perpetrator to be fully excused. He called for a punishment of 10 years’ imprisonment with hard labor. However, he was looking for a way to take into account both the requirements of the law, and his understanding of custom and social requirements. Referring to Section 216 (c), which called for the proof of preparation, he claimed that the criterion had not been sufficiently fulfilled.Footnote ⁶⁹ This would enable him to moderate the sentence from murder to manslaughter, even though the PCCO–1936 did not explicitly take tradition and custom into account as mitigating factors.

The Supreme Court of Appeal

The criminal appeal focused on the assessment of the decisions of the previous instance and retained the same criminal code discourse. However, because of the importance of the SC and the exemplary role of its decisions, there were cases in which the justices explicitly referred to what could be seen, or what was presented to them, as “the cultural aspect of the crime,” to a far greater extent than the Court of Criminal Assize. For this reason, we have chosen to deal separately with the two instances, despite the fact that in all the cases we studied, both focused exclusively on the wording of the PCCO–1936 regarding homicide and the criteria for provocation.

The three judges of the SC, who dealt with the appeal submitted by one of Palestine's leading legal professionals, Henry Cattan, in 1946, included two British Justices, Chief Justice William FitzGerald and Justice Bernard Vidal. Shaw, and one Arab Justice, Justice Majid Abdulhadi. They fully agreed on dismissing Imkheibir's appeal against the sentence passed by the Court of Criminal Assize.Footnote ⁷⁰ In their detailed ruling, the justices referred to the claim put forward by Cattan. It is beyond the scope of our discussion here to present Cattan's argument in detail. Suffice to say that Cattan, Imkheibir's attorney, was himself incredulous concerning the story that his client devised, and made it clear that he did not expect the court to accept it. Instead, he suggested a more feasible situation, in which an argument had taken place between Imkheibir and his cousin Tamam. As the former was already extremely angry at his cousin for having left her husband, the suggested argument was presented as a sufficient provocation for Imkheibir to have lost his self-restraint.

The justices responded to Cattan's suggestion in their ruling:

The SC justices appear to take a far more explicit, yet somewhat ambivalent position regarding the mitigating factor of “family honor.” They acknowledged the prevalence of the communal code, relating in an extremely positive manner to the importance of custom and tradition. Although they raised the issue of “repugnancy,” they took no clear position on the matter. The legal criteria for “provocation” enabled them to claim that in fact no provocation, in the sense of an immediate, unexpected, and shocking event, had taken place. In other words, once they decided that there had been no provocation, they did not have to decide whether the act resulting from the provocation (had it occurred) was repugnant or not. The Supreme Court of Appeal confirmed the death penalty. The high commissioner, in light of the petitions sent to him, decided to commute the death penalty to life imprisonment.

At approximately the same time, 1944, the court sitting for the appeal of Kamel Ahmed Hussein el-Majdoub, Chief Justice FitzGerald, Justice Edward, and Justice Abdulhadi expressed a similar ambivalence, though they were more straightforward in their rejection of the “communal code,” as it was argued before them.Footnote ⁷² In the trial court, the defense attorney brought as an expert witness Sheikh Suliman Saleh, who stated that “A man who heard that his aunt committed adultery would be greatly provoked. His family honour touched.” The SC justices did not ignore the issue raised by both the Sheikh and the judge. “It has been argued with intensity before us that ‘family honor constitutes a ruling code in the Arab way of life, and any infringement of it is an offence which arouses horror.’ This is a fact of which we are very well aware, and it is far from the purpose of the Court of this Territory to undermine this laudable sentiment of Arab culture. But, however intensely felt, and however praiseworthy their origin, those sentiments cannot be accepted as a justification for the taking away of human life.”Footnote ⁷³

Although clearly rejecting the “taking of human life,” the ruling remained ambivalent. Although rejected, the claims put forward by the defense attorney were treated cautiously, and at least lip service was paid to the “laudable sentiments of Arab culture.” The court then returned to the ruling of the Court of Criminal Assize and supported its decision that the criteria for provocation had not been met. The court stuck to the criteria of the criminal code, acknowledging the relevance of “honor” and family morality to the case, but not to its judicial outcome. Once again, the Supreme Court of Appeal confirmed the death penalty; and once again the high commissioner commuted the punishment.

The Reports of the Presiding Judge

Once the SC gave its final decision, which in almost all the cases we reviewed supported the previous verdict of murder and capital punishment, the judicial procedure as such ended. However, the next stage, the appeal to the high commissioner, was not totally divorced from the judicial process. The presiding judge of the Court of Criminal Assize, who himself was always a member of the SC, presented the high commissioner with a case summary, the grounds for the court's decision, and additional comments that he found relevant. Thus, it is possible to compare the position taken regarding the tension between the colonial legal code and the communal one, by the same legal practitioner, at two different stages: once as the presiding judge of the trial court, and once as the judge moving out of the courtroom and presenting judicial and semijudicial considerations to the chief executive authority. In this case, the transition from legal considerations based on the wording of the law, which left little, if any, room for custom/tradition or other expressions of communal requirements, to a complex debate that combined the legal and the communal, in most cases giving ultimate priority to the latter, can most clearly be seen.

At least in some cases, the reporting justices appear routinely to categorize the homicide as “FHK,” a category that did not appear in the criminal code, and to consider it as deserving special treatment. Therefore, in his letter in 1940 to the new High Commissioner, Sir Harold MacMichael, Chief Justice Harry Trusted wrote, “I think there can be no doubt that this was an ‘honour’ murder and if Your Excellency intends to continue Sir Arthur Wauchope's practice [of exercising the prerogative of mercy] in such cases, I have no hesitation in saying that this is such a one.”Footnote ⁷⁵ In most, but certainly not all cases, as will be discussed subsequently, the justice who reviewed the case for the high commissioner recommended that “the prerogative of mercy” be followed, and that the death penalty be commuted.

The case of Atiya Isma'il Faraj and the murder of his cousin Rifqa Ali Attalah Faraj differed in significant respects from those discussed.Footnote ⁷⁶ Rifqa had been out collecting wood with her cousin's wife when the latter was attacked and, as implied, raped. Rifqa insisted over a number of days that she did not know the identity of the molester. Thus, she both raised suspicion of having herself been involved in one way or other in the attack and also prevented her cousin from taking revenge and re-establishing his honor. Atiya Isma'il admitted to killing Rifqa but insisted that this had been caused by his discovering her having intercourse with a stranger in the early hours of the morning when her husband was away at work. The majority of the judges, as discussed, including the presiding judge, Justice W.C. Currie, rejected this as an unlikely story, denied any immediate provocation, and sentenced the accused to death for premeditated murder. No mention at all was made in the judgment of the issue of honor or any other communal aspect.

In comparison, the report written by Justice Currie for the high commissioner combined the legal and the communal in a completely new manner. After repeating the main evidence and the grounds for the rejection of “immediate provocation,” Justice Currie presented at least a glimpse of his broader understanding of the social significance of what had happened at court. He drew attention, for the first time, to the fact that the community appeared to support Atiye Isma'il's deed, a point that was totally irrelevant to the criminal code. He also called attention to the absence of witnesses who could have implicated the accused, but seemed to avoid giving evidence. Atiye Isma'il's actions were framed as being part of a deeply ingrained communal understanding, as being part of a recognized “category” not mentioned in, and not relevant to, the criminal code.

The conclusion of the report was mixed: a “civilizing” message on the one hand, and “clemency” on the other. The high commissioner pursued the course suggested by Justice Currie.

The same year, 1947, referring to the case of Mahmoud Abdel Hadi El- Kassas, convicted for the murder of his cousin Turkieh, Justice Currie wrote once again to the high commissioner:

In the very last days of the British Mandate, Currie did not want British rule, via the courts, to take on a “civilizing mission;” however, he did want to exert some influence on the communal, and specifically religious, authorities. When acting as a judge of the SC and of the Court of Criminal Assize, Currie stuck to the criteria of the criminal code: could premeditation be proven, or could it not. As an official in the colonial service, he proposed to the high commissioner to pursue a different course, which would take into consideration patriarchal communal understanding and thus avoid negating or opposing communal sensitivities.

However, Justice Currie's position was not the only option. In his review to High Commissioner Harold MacMichael of the case AG v. Muhammad Ahmad Salem Ishreim,Footnote ⁷⁹ Justice Randolph Copland presented a different position. He was also keenly aware of what he perceived as custom and tradition. He also considered cases that conformed to communal demands to be worthy of some consideration when deciding on the final verdict. However, the case of Ishreim aroused his deep concern and brought forth his sharp criticism of what he considered to be a far too merciful and unprincipled position of the judiciary and the high commissioner acting in conjunction. This was an unconventional letter, in striking contrast to the more common condensed form that raised few questions. Therefore, Chief Justice Harry Trusted wrote to High Commissioner MacMichael, for example: “I think there can be no doubt that this was an ‘honour’ murder, and if your excellency intends to continue Sir Arthur Wauchope's practice of exercising the prerogative in such cases, I have no hesitation in saying that this is such a one.”Footnote ⁸⁰

In contrast, in the case mentioned, Justice Randolph Copland challenged this position. After referring to the fact that in the case under review, two women were murdered by repeated, deep and fatal stabbing, he continued:

The point is not whether the British did or did not put an end to sati in India, a view that has been challenged over recent decades. For our case, the important point is that Justice Randolph Copland chose to draw a comparison between “Family Honour Killing” and “Suttee,” the latter being a custom that the British had been trying to eradicate for at least 100 years, although, as discussed, they were ambivalent for a long time in their approach.

The reports of the justices to the high commissioner can be seen as an exchange within the colonial administration. The petitions sent by family members of the victim, communal dignitaries, and, at times, representatives of national institutions, demonstrate the attempt of the local population to affect the final outcome of the trial. This was done by steering clearly away from the legal discourse and the criminal code, and by expressing their own assessments and values.

Communal Petitions

The petitions introduced a different rhetoric. They disengaged themselves from the logic of the criminal code in which the central issues were immediacy, provocation, and premeditation. They portrayed the accused as a socially commendable young man who had acted in response to the behavior of his sister, cousin, or aunt, and was trying to defend the moral communal codes. The numerous petitions can be divided into two categories: the first, petitions submitted by family members of both the victim and the accused; the second, petitions submitted by local and national dignitaries.

Petitions Submitted by Family Members

It should be noted that the murderer was, himself, a member of the family of the victim, and, therefore, might well get the support of other family members. However, there were also family members, possibly of an even closer relation, who could deny the charges of “immorality” or of adultery leveled at the murdered woman. They could demand, and expect to receive, compensation from the murderer or his immediate family. Referring back to the Ottoman Penal Code of the first half of the nineteenth century, which contained many elements of the Shari'a, the family of the victim played an important role in determining the charge against the perpetrator and, even more so, in determining the nature of the punishment.Footnote ⁸² There was formal room for the two sides to negotiate and reach an agreement, which would then be accepted by the court.Footnote ⁸³ The petitions of the 1940s seem to retain elements not only of the Ottoman Code but also of the communal code, which embedded religious and civil elements. In some cases, the relatives gave clear-cut support to the perpetrator, who was a member of their own extended family. In others, the support was far more implicit, if at all. Family members of the victim, regardless of their position toward the murder, appear to have reached an agreement outside of the court, and petitioned the high commissioner to accept their understanding with the accused.

Six men of the el-Majdoub family, for example, expressed their support of Kamel el-Majdoub, who had murdered his aunt. They justified his act by referring to the decrees of the Shari'a, and concluded their petition, writing: “We, the relatives of the murdered woman, declare that we have abandoned all our rights, and solicit that the murderer be treated with sympathy and pardoned from death sentence.”Footnote ⁸⁴ In another case, the brother of Tamam, Farhan, gave evidence at court of her reputable and proper behavior. He did not go back on his support; however, he also petitioned the high commissioner on behalf of his convicted cousin: “I declare that I have made peace with my cousin Mkheiber [Imkheibir] Kataf who was condemned to death on account of the murder of my sister and I have waived all my rights against him. […] In view of our relations and the age of the accused which does not exceed 18 years and in view further of the reasons which prompted my cousin to kill my sister I pray for Your Excellency to pardon him and to commute the sentence of death to another sentence.”Footnote ⁸⁵

Petitions by Local and National Dignitaries

In each of the cases discussed, when a young man was sentenced to death for killing his sister, cousin, or aunt, local dignitaries supported his appeal to the high commissioner. On the whole, the letters were short and to the point, stating the traditional/communal importance of the “defense of family honor,” and the expectation that the high commissioner would consider this factor of great enough importance to change the sentence. The formula repeatedly used when writing to the high commissioner, as translated into English, was for him to “exercise his prerogative of clemency” and commute the death penalty to a sentence of imprisonment. A few examples will suffice.

In 1932, in the case of Muhammad Haj Salah el-Zawawi, an accompanying letter was signed by fifteen seals of Mukhtars of Jerusalem (as noted by the Supreme Moslem Council in its accompanying letter) and inhabitants of the Maghrabeh Quarter in Jerusalem. “The condemned person Muhammad has been known to us for a considerable number of years to be a man of good character, enjoying satisfactory reputation and a defender of his faith and honour. To the best of our knowledge he always loved his sister Miriam who he murdered because of the immoral life she was leading and which character is against God's wish and the Moslem faith.”Footnote ⁸⁶

The dignitaries of the 1940s followed suit. A number of petitions accompanied the appeal of Kamel Ahmad Hussein el-Majdoub from the village of Amqa of the district of Acre. The petitions were sent by public figures of different communities, not necessarily the community to which the accused belonged. Therefore, dignitaries from the district of Hebron wrote – “[We] trust that you will be moved to commute the death sentence passed upon the young man Kamel Ahmed Hussein el-Majdoub of Amqa, Acre S/D, especially as the murder was committed in defense of family honour which is one of our most sacred traditions.”Footnote ⁸⁷ A similar petition was sent once again by dignitaries from the Hebron District requesting the commuting of the death penalty passed on Mahmoud Abdul Hadi el-Kassas, who had murdered his cousin, known to have had a bad reputation in the village for “immoral” behavior: “We appeal to Your Excellency to commute the death penalty passed on Mahmoud Abdul Hadi Al-Qassas [el-Kassas] for having murdered his cousin, Turkiah Husain Al-Qassas [el-Kassas], who was a prostitute out of his desire to redeem his family's honour. The Arab man sacrifices everything to defend his family's honour, which is the last thing left for him to defend.”Footnote ⁸⁸

Finally, in the late 1940s, petitions were also submitted by organizations and institutions of an explicitly urban and national, rather than rural and regional affiliation. Thus, more than ten urban organizations were signatories to the petition requesting that the death penalty be commuted in the case of Imkheiber. Their petition, translated into English, made clear reference to the Arab collective in the name of which they were writing. “We, the undersigned, the representatives of the General Institutions of Jaffa, beg from Your Excellency the commutation of the sentence of death passed upon [I]Mkheiber Kataf for killing his cousin Tamam Akil Kataf. He had committed the said crime in defense of the honour of his family and tribe and Your Excellency is no doubt aware of the fact that to an Arab the defense of his honor is rooted in his blood and that was the motive for the commission of the offence of murder.[ …]”Footnote ⁸⁹

The petition, in its original form in Arabic, had signatures and seals of at least ten organizations mainly from the urban center of Jaffa, among them The Arab Front in Jaffa, The Arab Book Stores Union, The Philanthropic Public Association of Education, The Nation Fund Office, The Association of Textile Merchants, The Moslem Brotherhood in Jaffa, The Barbers Association, The Tailors Association, an advertising services office, and two law firms.

We can assume that the defense attorney, Henry Cattan, being a leading legal practitioner and public figure, was able to recruit the heads of the various organizations, regardless of the fact that the young man sentenced to death had little to do with the region of Jaffa. Judging by the terminology of the various petitions and by the national and political identity of the organizations, the signatories were probably motivated by the desire to preserve cultural codes and protect them from foreign intervention. This desire was exacerbated by the events of the time, the struggle against the British and the Jewish settlement, which was escalating.

The petitions discussed in this section referred explicitly to a communal code: of the family, village, tribe, subdistrict, faith, and people (in the sense of nation or peoplehood). Such a communal code had little, or nothing, to do with the rationale of the judicial process. In fact, it contradicted it. If the women had become “prostitutes” by their “immorality,” by their reputed illegitimate expressions of sexuality, and by their disregard for the patriarchs of their family, the young men were honor and duty bound, so it was repeatedly implied, to wipe out the women, not only their deeds. Whether they actually endorsed such practices or considered them the best appeal to the high commissioner, is still an open question.

In most cases, the high commissioner accepted the petitions and commuted the death sentence to long-term imprisonment. The patriarchal codes of Palestinian society and the need of the colonial administration to minimize public unrest appear to have reached a common ground. Although the petitioners did not ask for the release of the young men, who upheld, so they claimed, communal goals, the high commissioner did not insist on capital punishment for men, who killed women of their families, even though the newly legislated criminal code was meant to minimize that phenomenon.