92 chapter two Multi-level discrimination against Palestinians through laws, access to rights and resources, and government policies has particularly devastating consequences for the lives of Palestinian women.104 Overall, and faced with patriarchal rules and customs reflecting a gender hierarchy in their societies, Palestinian women citizens of Israel face discrimination on three distinct yet connected levels: as members of an underdevel­ oped minority population, as women living in Israel, and as women in Palestinian society. These simultaneous and interrelated dynamics severely compromise the social and economic welfare of Palestinian women. This is principally the case in the area of health care. Generally speaking, women in Israel are a vulnerable group in matters of health, but obtaining access to adequate health care is particularly difficult for many Palestinian women. Surveys repeatedly show that Arab women score worse than all other social groups in many health indicators, including, among others, life expectancy, incidence of chronic illness, obesity and breast cancer (Khatib 2012, 31). There are no major public hospitals in the Arab sector and in many Palestinian villages and towns no gynaecological services are available. Women must therefore travel long distances to major cities to receive women’s health services; a lack of safe roads and societal taboos against traveling alone make these long distances prohibitive for many. Having reached a hospital, women are faced with unaffordable costs and language barriers. In areas of Israel where the economic and social situation is particularly trying for Palestinian citizens, such as the Naqab and the ‘unrecognized’ villages, women often bear the brunt of the difficulties. Overall, government budget and resource provisions are consistently greater for Jewish citizens and communities than they are for Palestinian-Arabs. Discriminatory standards and criteria are applied by governmental and state-sponsored institutions and effectively exclude Arabs and disadvantage this population as a whole – with particularly devastating effects on marginalized segments within the community. a court and prison, and later as a museum. Since 1991, the Big Mosque has stood empty and neglected and when the city’s Muslims sought to use it as a mosque, the municipality sought instead to transform the structure into a museum or an Islamic Cultural Center (ibid.). 104 While I am not examining the particular situation of Palestinian women in Israel in this book, an account of the multifaceted discrimination faced by women in Israel is a source of immense insight for understanding the Israeli incorporation regime. For strong feminist analysis of gendered citizenship in Israel see Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2004, 2007, 2009). See also Kanaaneh (2002); Kanaaneh and Nusair (2010); and Herzog (2004). Another analysis read through an anti-colonialist and feminist lens and informed by a Marxist critique, is Abdo (2011), a contribution that is examined in Chapter Five below.