palestinian wedding

Peoples around the world celebrate weddings with feasting and religious or folkloric rituals to mark new beginnings and, especially in ancient agricultural times, the hope for new generations.  But for Palestinians weddings are more than a time to look forward; they are a time to connect Palestinian history and age-old traditions with a Palestinian future, and to create a Palestinian national identity by honoring a common cultural heritage.  Muslim and Christian wedding ceremonies are different but the celebrations bring both communities together in a common bond of solidarity in the face of the Occupation and often serve as a time for reconciling past tensions or differences.

In Palestine it is the village or the town that hosts the week-long series of ceremonies that comprise a Palestinian wedding.  The slaughtering of the sheep is done by the groom’s father and family members and friends complete the task by cutting or chopping the meat into the various cuts for different uses.  Women in the bride’s family mix the crushed and powdered henna leaves with liquid to make the paint that will be used on “Mehndi Night” when older women will decorate the bride and her female guests with traditional designs.  For some a design will be painted on the bride’s legs to represent the soil that the dove brought back to the prophet Noah on the ark as evidence that the flood and destruction was over and the earth was ready for a new beginning.

The over-arching element in all the wedding ceremonies is song.   There are songs while preparing food, old Arabic songs of sadness and happiness for the bride who is leaving her family, songs for the bride going to a new home, songs to accompany the groom’s family when they bring sweets to the bride’s family on “Mehndi Night”, the henna celebration.  The poet who comes to the groom’s family home on the wedding day sings his poems and the crowds of villagers and friends who line the street during the procession of the groom to his bride and their new home sing their joy.

On the day of the wedding, the groom is shaved in a public ceremony to show the bride that he is clean and shining after having spent the previous month not shaving and wearing dirty clothes.  The procession then begins with the groom, very clean and well-dressed, mounted on a horse or donkey, surrounded by his family who sing for him.  As the group proceeds along the streets to where the bride is waiting, villagers come out from their homes, bringing food for the coming celebration and adding their voices to the songs.  After the exchange of vows, there may be a “tajalay” ceremony in which the bride declares herself to be a “good girl” who has not humiliated her family.  Before the married couple enters their new home, each slaps a piece of dough on the wall above the door, first the bride, then the groom, in an ancient ritual that signifies a hope that joy will grow in the house in the same way as the baking soda grows inside the dough.

Laws

Personal status issues of Muslims in the Palestinian territories, including marriage, are governed by customary law, of the Sunni Islam Hanafi school (despite most Palestinian Muslims follow the Shafi’i school) as codified and modified by legislation as follows:

• for Muslims in the West Bank – the Jordanian Personal Status Law of 1976 continues to apply. However, PA Law no. 5 of 2018, signed on 14 March 2018, repealed the marry-your-rapist law contained in article 308 of the 1960 Jordon Penal Code.
• for Muslims in the Gaza Strip – the Egyptian Law of Family Rights 1954 continues to apply.^[4]
• Muslims in East Jerusalem, which is claimed by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, are subject to Israeli marriage law, which is based on the Israeli Millet system, which applies to Muslims in Israel the Ottoman Law of Family Rights as amended by Israeli legislation since 1948.^[1] Since at least 1959, polygamous marriages have been prohibited in Israel, which applies to members of each confessional community, including the Jewish and Muslim.^[5]

Registration of marriage is mandatory, but failure to register a marriage does not invalidate the marriage.

As at March 2012, work is reported to be proceeding on the text of a Palestinian personal status law.

Minimum marriage age

In the Gaza Strip, the Egyptian-issued Law of Family Rights 1954 set puberty as the minimum age of marriage with no marriage allowed for a female aged under 9 or a male aged under 12. The Palestinian Qadi al-Quda issued an administrative decision in 1995 raising these ages in Gaza to a minimum of 15 for a female and 16 for a male, which aligned with the Jordanian law which applied to the West Bank. In 2010, in the West Bank, the minimum age of marriage was 15 for girls and 16 for boys. In Gaza the minimum age was 17 for girls and 18 for boys. Judges had the power to approve an earlier marriage. In November 2019, the PA government raised the minimum marriage age to 18 for both genders in an effort to reduce rates of early marriage.

According to statistics, 37% of married Palestinian females married when they were under the age of 18, including 5% who married before the age of 15. 63% of young married women suffer violence at the hands of their husband, and 95% would not recommend early marriage for their daughters. Child marriage is thought to contribute to the high rate of divorce in the Palestinian territories, where 67% of women who divorced in 2018 were aged 18 to 29

Polygamy

Polygyny, whereby a husband has more than one wife, is explicitly permitted under Islam.^[9] There are also the classical injunctions that a man must treat all co-wives equitably and provide them with separate dwellings, and a man must declare his social status in the marriage contract.^[10]

Polyandry, whereby a wife has more than one husband, is not permitted. Residents of East Jerusalem are subject to Israeli marriage law, which since at least 1959 has barred the formation of polygamous unions in Israel.

Other issues

Violence against women within marriage is a major issue facing women in Palestine. According to a 2005 survey by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 23.3% of women who had ever been married reported that they had been subjected to physical violence, 61.7% to psychological violence, and 10% to sexual violence.^[11] It’s estimated that 30% of married women in the West Bank and 50% in Gaza will be subjected to domestic violence, and less than 1% will seek the help of a social worker, a shelter, a civil-society organisation or the police.

In 2008 the Palestinian Police established the Family Protection Unit and the Juvenile Unit (FJPU), tasked with investigating complaints of domestic violence and sexual assault. Since the introduction of the FJPU, the number of cases of domestic violence reported to police have increased dramatically, with 3,660 reported in 2013.

Violence against women is especially problematic in Gaza, with the number of incidences being generally higher. Police in Gaza reportedly refrain from publishing statistics on the number of complaints women make against their husbands, to deter more women from speaking up. One move to address marriage issue in Gaza has been the adoption of “Mukhtaras”, female community leaders able to mediate between families and communities on issues involving women, such as marriage, divorce, custody and alimony. The Aisha Association for Woman and Child Protection works to empower vulnerable women and children who are victims of violence.

Other issues

Violence against women within marriage is a major issue facing women in Palestine. According to a 2005 survey by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 23.3% of women who had ever been married reported that they had been subjected to physical violence, 61.7% to psychological violence, and 10% to sexual violence.^[11] It’s estimated that 30% of married women in the West Bank and 50% in Gaza will be subjected to domestic violence, and less than 1% will seek the help of a social worker, a shelter, a civil-society organisation or the police.^[12]

In 2008 the Palestinian Police established the Family Protection Unit and the Juvenile Unit (FJPU), tasked with investigating complaints of domestic violence and sexual assault.^[13] Since the introduction of the FJPU, the number of cases of domestic violence reported to police have increased dramatically, with 3,660 reported in 2013.^[14]

Violence against women is especially problematic in Gaza, with the number of incidences being generally higher. Police in Gaza reportedly refrain from publishing statistics on the number of complaints women make against their husbands, to deter more women from speaking up.^[15] One move to address marriage issue in Gaza has been the adoption of “Mukhtaras”, female community leaders able to mediate between families and communities on issues involving women, such as marriage, divorce, custody and alimony.^[16] The Aisha Association for Woman and Child Protection works to empower vulnerable women and children who are victims of violence.

Marry-your-rapist laws

Since being annexed by Egypt in 1959, the Gaza Strip has applied Egyptian penal law Articles 290 and 291, a marry-your-rapist law that allowed an accused rapist to evade punishment by marrying his victim. These provisions were repealed in Egypt itself in 1999, but continued to apply in the Gaza Strip.^[17]

After being annexed by Jordan in 1950, the 1960 Jordanian penal law Article 308, which contained a similar provision, has applied in the West Bank.^[17] It is unclear how often the law was applied in practice. Ikhlas Sufan, director of a Nablus victims of violence shelter, told Human Rights Watch that “between 2011 and 2017 prosecution for rape has been halted in 60 cases – in which the shelter was helping the women – after the alleged rapist agreed to marry the victim. In 15 of these cases the women later divorced these men.”^[18] An activist campaign put pressure on the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas who eventually signed Law no. 5 of 2018 on 14 March 2018, which repealed article 308 of the 1960 Jordon Penal Code enforced in the West Bank. However, because the Gaza Strip is de facto controlled by Hamas, the Egyptian-derived marry-your-rapist law still applies there.