In their study of intimate-partner violence in the Palestinian territories,1 Cari Jo Clark and colleagues suggest that exposure to political violence increases the odds that men will act violently towards their wives. However, particular care needs to be paid to how the variables are defined, lest misleading conclusions be drawn.

A major problem with assessing the validity of the study is that we know very little about the instrument, apparently unpublished, used to measure exposure to political violence. The paper suggests, though, that the vast majority of episodes of direct exposure to political “violence” involved being “insulted” or “cursed”. Although undoubtedly unpleasant, such experiences do not constitute violence in any usual sense of the term. Nor, on their face, does being detained or “being made a fugitive”, which also counted as exposure to violence.

The two most common indirect exposures to violence reported were having one’s house broken into or one’s land confiscated, again aversive experiences, but not necessarily violent. Finally, whatever the validity of a self-reported determination that one’s economic status has been affected by the occupation, it is most certainly not violence, and yet was counted as such in this study.

We note that the theoretical basis for this study rests on data indicating higher rates of domestic violence among soldiers actively exposed to violence. Whatever this study is about, it is not really about political violence as a precipitant of intimate-partner violence-at least not violence in any common sense of the word.

PA is a member of the Public Health and Medicine Task Force of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. SMA is Chair of the Task Force.