Shock, questions after the gruesome murder of a Palestinian gay

Shock, questions after the gruesome murder of a Palestinian gay

The severed head and torso of a 25-year-old Palestinian was discovered by the side of a road in the occupied West Bank, police said Friday, confirming shocking details of the killing of a Palestinian youth that shocked Palestinian society.

But accounts that the victim, Ahmed Abu Markhiya, was a gay man who feared persecution because of his sexual orientation, had sought asylum in Israel two years ago, and turned the horrific crime into a socially and politically explosive issue.

It was not clear how Abu Markhiya ended up in Hebron, the conservative West Bank city from which he was reported to have fled. Palestinian police officials told The Associated Press on Friday that Abu Markhiya’s head and torso were found near his family’s home.

Police spokesman Colonel Louay Arezakat said that the authorities had arrested a Palestinian who knew Abu Markhiya as a suspect in the murder, but refused to give a motive or clarify their relationship pending investigation.

The horrific killing took hold of Palestinian social media, but it was silent on the issue of Abu Markiah’s sexuality. Homosexuality remains a deep taboo in the Palestinian territories, where traditional norms play a prominent role in social and political life.

There is still a lot of anger throughout the West Bank. Video footage taken by Palestinian youths of Abu Markhiya’s dismembered body on a hill slope, spread across WhatsApp groups, causing shock and horror, before it was lowered.

“This is a very heinous crime,” an older relative, also called Ahmed Abu Markhiya, told the Palestinian radio station Al-Karama. “Such a thing should not be discussed.”

The Abu Markhiya family issued a statement of mourning and blessing and asked for privacy after “this heinous and unprecedented crime that shook the country.”

The family claimed that Abu Markhiya lived and worked between Hebron and neighboring Jordan, where his late father belonged.

As news of Abu Markhiya’s death spread, a completely different version of events emerged from Israel. LGBTQ organizations and emergency shelters that help LGBT asylum seekers said they knew he was gay and needed to escape from the Palestinian territories, where he was a target.

Rita Petrenko, founder of The Different House, an Israeli gay rights organization serving the Arab community, said Abu Markhiya’s fear was palpable when they met in 2020.

“He told me that people not only in his family but in the village wanted to kill him,” she said, adding that he fled to Israel as news of his sexual orientation spread in Hebron two years ago. “He was afraid for his brothers, uncles and cousins.”

Petrenko said Abu Markhiya was going from shelter to shelter and taking out occasional jobs at a Tel Aviv restaurant, while she helped him apply for resettlement in Canada.