Global Policy Forum

By Ilene Prusher

Gaza City, Gaza Strip - Amal Sayam plies the slums of Gaza with a revolutionary message: Don't marry early. One 15-year-old, already engaged, was swayed. But when the high school student tried to discuss this change of mind with her parents, she found that it was too late. In Islamic courts, an engagement contract is as binding as marriage. To get out of it, she would need to be granted a divorce. That unlikely feat would probably limit her remarriage prospects.

Ms. Sayam and a consortium of Palestinian women's groups are drafting a "personal status law" which would raise the minimum age for marriage to 18 and give women equal rights in divorce and inheritance. Advocates like Sayam don't want to leave the futures of young girls up to parents who, driven by tradition or economic pressures, offer their daughters in marriage - sometimes unbeknownst to the bride-to-be - at such young ages.

The proposed status law is seen by proponents as key in ensuring that women's rights are an integral part of the nation-building process taking place in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, women are planning to demand the law's passage in a march at the Gaza City parliament building to mark International Women's Day. Palestinian women are encouraged by last week's ruling in neighboring Egypt that allows women to initiate divorce. The law is the first of its kind in the region (with the exception of Tunisia, with liberal laws since the 1950s).

The women hope they can shape their legal status while new laws are under consideration to replace the hodge-podge of old ones left over from British, Egyptian, Israeli, and Jordanian rule. Religious conservatives, however, stand fundamentally opposed to anything seen as tinkering with sharia, or Islamic law, which applies to the vast majority of Palestinians. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian President, has appointed a committee of political and religious officials to come up with their own draft law to be presented to the parliament. But the committee includes no women or known progressives. It is headed by the Jerusalem mufti, or preeminent Islamic official - leading rights' groups to fear their demands could be ignored.

Ayam, one of nine children, married late by Gaza standards, waiting until the age of 25. A study by the Women's Affairs Center here found that in 42 percent of recent Gaza marriages, the bride was under the age of 17. While the minimum age for marriage here is 15 for girls and 16 for boys, local leaders who preside over marriages are authorized to make exceptions. They often approve unions with brides as young as nine and grooms as young as 12.

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