The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its November report that in October alone four women were murdered - three in the northern West Bank and one in Gaza.

According to experts and human rights organizations about 60 cases, thought to be only the tip of the iceberg, were reported in recent years in Gaza and the West Bank. Few of the perpetrators were tried before courts, and those who were were let off lightly.

Article 340 of Jordanian Penal Law No. 16 (1960), also in force in the West Bank, provides that any man who kills or attacks his wife or any of his female relatives if they are committing adultery is exempt from punishment.

"Very seldom are the killers arrested or charged, and when they are the maximum sentence that can be imposed is six months. And that is when the victims are found to be innocent of adultery," Mashour Basisy, general director of planning at the PA's Ministry for Women's Affairs, told the Middle East Times.

"Furthermore, legally the police are under no obligation to arrest or charge perpetrators for less serious assaults," he said.

The number of femicides are thought to be much higher than reported. This is because many go unreported due to the shame and stigma the women are perceived to have brought on their families. Added to this is an unsupportive judicial system and a society that isn't very sympathetic to the victims.

A poll of 1,133 women, carried out several years ago by the Palestinian Working Women's Society for Development in cooperation with the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, found that more than 50 percent of them thought it was inappropriate for police to interfere in domestic violence and that the issue should only be discussed among family members.

"Violence against women is regarded as a taboo subject in our patriarchal society. And with the problems associated with the occupation such as closed areas, military raids, and limited access due to the barrier in the occupied Palestinian territories it has not been addressed adequately," Dima Nashashibi, deputy director of the Women's Center for Legal Advice and Counseling in Ramallah told the Middle East Times.

Some women have been severely abused. A Central Bureau of Statistics survey published by the PA in 2006 said that 23.3 percent of married women in the occupied territories admitted they had been victims of domestic violence, while 61.7 percent reported they have suffered psychological violence.

Seventy percent of victims reported that the fear of losing their children was one reason they did not leaving their abusive marriages. Custody usually goes to the fathers under Jordanian and Egyptian penal laws, which apply to the West Bank and Gaza respectively.

Close to 50 percent felt that divorce was too stigmatizing and 21.9 percent reported that they would have no place to go if they left home.

"Only 12 percent of Palestinian women work outside of their homes so few have the option of leaving for practical economic reasons. And many of their families would not be sympathetic to their situation or take them back home," explained Nashashibi.

The judiciary is not sympathetic either. According to a report released by Human Rights Watch called, A Question of Security: Violence against Palestinian Women and Girls, women have two legal options:" press charges for spousal abuse or initiate divorce proceedings for assault.

Both require that women show evidence of extreme violence and impose a high evidentiary burden on the victim. As there is no domestic violence legislation in the occupied territories victims have to rely on general assault laws.

If the victim spends less than 10 days in hospital, a judge can dismiss the case completely. If she is hospitalized for up to 20 days, the judge can impose a slightly higher sentence on the perpetrator.

But the woman would need to provide two eye-witnesses who are not her relatives, and the case can be dismissed if the husband denies the charges. Furthermore, neither the Jordanian nor the Egyptian penal codes recognize sexual violence within marriage.

Desperation has led some women to take the law into their own hands. At the time of writing several women were waiting trial in the Palestinian territories for murdering their abusive spouses.

But efforts are being made on the NGO level. In a move to offer safely to the abused women, the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counselling has teamed up with the PA's social and women's affairs ministries to establish three shelters for battered women in Nablus, Jericho, and Bethlehem in the West Bank. Together they can look after up to 50 women for a month.

"We provide legal advice and counseling to the women," Nashashibi told the U.N.'s humanitarian affairs office. "Depending on the circumstances of each case, women either return home after their stay - if the threat has subsided through counseling or family intervention - or are found emergency shelter in another refuge if this is too dangerous."