I have only a few comments on this story because I truly hope it says it all:

Rofayda Qaoud - raped by her brothers and impregnated - refused to commit suicide, her mother recalls, even after she bought the teenager a razor with which to slit her wrists. So Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud says she did what she believes any good Palestinian parent would to restore her family's honor.

Armed with a plastic bag, razor and wooden stick, Qaoud entered her sleeping daughter's room Jan. 27.

"Tonight you die, Rofayda," she said, wrapping the bag tightly around the girl's head. She then sliced Rofayda's wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of "No, mother, no!"

After the girl went limp, Qaoud struck her on the head with the stick.

Killing her sixth-born child took 20 minutes, Qaoud, 43, tells a visitor through a stream of tears and cigarette smoke. "She killed me before I killed her," says the mother of nine. "I had to protect my children. This is the only way I could protect my family's honor."

I hope I don't need to insert any comment here. Her sons raped her daughter and she kills her daughter to protect the family honor. Makes sense to me.

Legal authority on the West Bank has been weakened by Israel's crackdown, and military factions' growing influence has led clans to dole out their own justice. "In this chaotic situation, every man who thinks he knows a little bit of the Koran... thinks honor issues are supposed to be resolved by killing," says Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who adds that leading clerics in Jordan and Jerusalem have denounced such killings.

Qaoud says her husband, Abdul Rahim, 52, told her the Koran forbade such killings. But neither his pleas nor those of crisis counselors swayed her. "Why did she accept what happened to her?" Qaoud asks. "Even a wife can tell her husband no."

No, legal authority was not weakened, legal authority has never existed. Arafat took the money that was meant for developing PA infrastructure and stuffed into Swiss bank accounts.

According to court records, Rofayda was raped by her brothers, Fahdi, 22, and Ali, 20, in a room they shared in the family's three-room house. On Nov. 26, 2002, doctors at a nearby hospital who were treating her for an injured leg discovered she was eight months pregnant.

Palestinian authorities took her to a women's shelter in Bethlehem, where she gave birth to a healthy boy on Dec. 23. He has been adopted by another family, court records show.

Rofayda, meanwhile, wanted to return to her parents in the Ramallah suburb of Abu Qash. Ramallah Gov. Mustafa Isa called a meeting with the family and village elders, demanding that they pledge in writing not to harm the girl.

"He asked me if everyone in the family and the village would promise not to bother this girl, but I told him I couldn't give him a guarantee," Abu Qash Mayor Faik Shalout says.

Rofayda returned home in late January without notifying the authorities.

The shame was unbearable, Qaoud said. Relatives and friends refused to speak to them. Her elder daughters' husbands wouldn't let them visit.

Maybe I'm confused. Let's hash this out for a second. The brothers raped her and she gave birth to...well her own nephew. The village elders had to protect the girl, who was raped by her own brothers, from other villagers and other members of the family shunned her. Makes sense again. This strikes me as sane, the girl was raped, by her brothers, and the family is shamed because the girl was not a virgin. Sounds like something we should institute in the good old US of A.

On Jan. 27, Rofayda sent word that she was in danger to crisis counselors at Abu-Dayyeh's center in East Jerusalem. They, in turn, called Palestinian police in Ramallah, who have jurisdiction over Abu Qash. The police said they could not get to the Qaoud home because of Israeli checkpoints.

Damn those Israeli checkpoints. You know, the ones they have in place because the peace-loving Palestinians, who kill their daughters for being raped, will kill civilians attending a seder if they were not in place.

While honor killings committed in the heat of the moment - for example, by a man who finds his wife in bed with another man - generally carry a six-month to one-year term, Qaoud is likely to be sentenced to three to five years in prison, Tarifi says. The fact that she was a mother trying to protect her family's honor mitigates the crime of premeditated murder, punishable by death under Palestinian law, he adds.

It wasn't premeditated because she was protecting her family's honor. She put a plastic bag over the childs head and cut her wrists as she pleaded for her life. She then whacked her with a stick. That is the definition of heat of the moment in my book. This is the heartwarming part of our story though:

The brothers are serving minimum 10-year sentences in a jail in the West Bank city of Jericho for statutory rape of a relative, Tarifi says.

No trace of Rofayda or her brothers remains in the family home. Qaoud says she ripped up all of their photographs and burned their clothes. The bedroom in which she killed her daughter is now a storeroom.

Erasing the memories is harder, she admits. She eases her pain by doting on the three children still at home, especially the youngest, Fatima, 9, whom she lavishes with kisses. The children say they have forgiven her and return her affection.

"My mother did this because she does not want us to be punished by people," Fatima explains with a shy smile. Leaning into Qaoud's arms, the little girl adds: "I love my mother much more now than before."

I think the fact that they actually have a law for rape of a family member speaks for itself. Let's not forget that she is a doting Mom who feels better by burning any remnants of her kids existence and turns the room she murdered her daughter in into a falafel storage area. I'm glad her 6-year old forgives her. She should feel comfortable for the next ten years. That's when the brothers get out.