Ways of confronting domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic

In general, all societies are subject to a system composed of a set of inter-relational interactions inside the family that lead to a change in behaviour among them which affects all the members of the family and consequently society — with this sentence Dr Bassam Saeed, the specialist in family affairs, opened the first episode of the radio programme “Gaza in the face of corona”, which the Pal-Think for Strategic Studies institution carries out within the project Gaza in the Face of Corona, funded by the Atlas foundation.

Saeed added that Palestinian society in general has not witnessed stability since the Nakba in 1948 and up to this moment, and the Gaza Strip has been distinguished by the greater suffering as a result of this state — and this has been reflected in the form of individuals' behaviour inside society, which paves the way for the spread of communal and family violence as a result of the deterioration of the reality of life. He made clear that however much the family tries to keep itself apart from the circles of violence and the communal circumstances surrounding it, it will inevitably fail — not to mention the high population density, which raises the impact and level of friction and altercations between people, alongside the impact of the blockade, the closure, and the repeated aggressions, which affect negatively the inter-relations inside society.

He mentioned that the coronavirus pandemic has weighed down the Palestinian family in the Gaza Strip and introduced to it new terms such as home quarantine, health quarantine, and the bullying of the infected, in addition to fear and excessive fear, which has been reflected in individuals' behaviour and their inter-relations inside the families and has raised the rates of violence and increased the family altercations and disputes between husband and wife and between the mother and her children and the father and his children — pointing out that all this affects psychological health and the negative mood, which in its turn reduces health immunity.

He pointed out that the widening of the expanse of the communal strata exposed to family violence and their diversity — from children, women, the elderly, and people with disability, reaching to the workers and those of daily income — has led to harm to the general communal psychological state and the spread of family violence and communal bullying; noting that the impact of the deteriorating economic state can be reduced by disbursing compensations or financial allocations to the categories harmed by the imposition of the state of emergency and the closures.

The specialist in family affairs noted that dialogue and its activation is the number-one solution for surpassing the impact of family disputes and the friction between its members, and the culture of tolerance and apologising to the other must be strengthened and civilised behaviour followed in solving problems — adding that the head of the family must watch the children's behaviour, work on directing and guiding them, keep away from comparing them with their peers and colleagues, and not take sides with one of the children.

As for the narrowness of the houses' spaces and their insufficiency for the children's practice of activities that work to discharge their negative energies, he said the family's members must work with what suits what is available and take care to organise the children's time in harmony with the sound educational process — such that they spend time of their own and time is filled with entertaining and useful activities and games, and there is no objection to adding a special time for the story and for connection and dialogue among the family's members on the communal issues surrounding them; times must likewise be dedicated to honing skills and practising the various hobbies.

He recommended to the families the necessity of preserving discipline inside the house and distributing tasks and dividing the housework among the members, and adherence to following up distance learning and following up work from home to preserve the brain's flexibility — in addition to this improving the positive mood and lightening the psychological pressure resulting from the closure and the home quarantine; calling on the governmental bodies and the civil-society organisations to continue presenting compensations, strengthening communal awareness, and investing in the citizen in all the health and economic respects, because it is the basis of the homeland's growth and elevation.