Introduction

The chapter shall contribute to the understanding of the notion of honour in legal cases in Palestinian society. Cases that involve the concept of honour are often perceived as “different”.

Cases of sexual assault are different. They are sensitive and very difficult, more difficult than blood [homicide]. And the compensation can reach a much higher level. Sometimes they ask for a million [Jordanian Dinar]. One has to use tricks regarding the facts.^[598]

As the quote indicates, such cases mentioned above are difficult to solve, they involve high possible wins and losses and they legitimise means that would otherwise be conceived as illegitimate (“tricks”). This explanation points to a very pragmatic approach by clan-based justice to these cases. However, when I discussed such cases in several different forums in recent years - be it in a Palestinian or German-Arab, in academic or non-academic context - it was noticeable that the differentness was also perceived as stemming from the expectation of some kind of irrational moment. For cases of honour people often expected some rigid, culturally given mechanism that removed the case from rational comprehension. Discussants tended to choose a cultural ap­proach in these cases more than they would for other cases, in which they would apply a rational-choice approach. As for my research an agent-centred rationalist approach proved explanatory for the functioning of legal pluralism and current developments, this raised the question, if strategical behaviour and pragmatism is as relevant for honour-centred cases.

Empirical data on informal justice in the Southern Palestinian West Bank which I collected between 2015 and 2016 suggest that while the outcomes of other types of cases reflect certain developments towards a growing consid­eration of certain principles of the rule of law, this cannot be observed for cases relating to the principle of female honour. For most types of cases such as homicide, accidents and battery, traditional instruments of informal jus­tice that target the collective (e.g. exiling the family of the perpetrator) are applied less frequently and with a lesser magnitude than in the past; lethal re­venge directed against other family members than the perpetrator has become rare; the question of actual guilt has become central as compared to the one of responsibility^[599] derived from the conditions of the case. For cases relating to female honour no such development is evident: these cases are generally handled with a strong collective focus, official courts are avoided, the severity of instances of sexual assault is often downplayed or covered up, and marriage remains a frequent solution whenever an illegitimate relationship might be perceived, including cases of sexual assault.

This chapter shall shed light on the relation between the factor of female honour and the challenge of certain aspects of clan-based justice by norms at­tributable to principles of the rule of law. An agent based rationalist approach shall highlight the specific subjective rationalities of agents in cases relating to honour.

Following a conceptual introduction, different data shall be analysed and compared. The direction of procedure is from abstract to particular. To capture a rough picture of the relation of agents to clan-based justice on the one hand and to (quasi-)state-justice^[600] on the other, survey-results of questions regarding the obligation to clan-based justice vs. state-justice as well as the recognition of vigilante justice are evaluated. Subsequently some results of questions re­garding the opinion of the questioned people on proceedings and methods in two fictitious cases are analysed and compared to the conclusions above. In a third step, two cases relating to female honour are analysed and compared to the previous data.

The chapter seeks to find answers to the following questions:

- Do norms that can be attributed to rule-of-law principles have any impact on cases with honour as a central factor?

- How is the weight and stability of the norm that the honour of a female or family must be preserved or restored to be estimated?

- To what degree is the assumption of rational choice a sustainable concept for the explanation of the developments and outcomes in cases of honour in the field of legal pluralism?

1.1