Gaza -

Young people and girls in Gaza view the project "a safe marriage license to ensure the safety of the family and the woman", and this difference results in many successful marital experiences, and others end with tragic stories.

Why this project?

This encouraged the Palestinian government in Gaza, through social development, to launch the “Safe Marriage License” project, which consists of several economic, social, health, legal and psychological courses, to prepare people capable of forming a healthy family and to avoid cases of violence and murder in which the mother and children are victims.

Marriage license is not shameful

Khalil al-Najjar (27 years old) and his fiancée Hanan al-Habibi (24 years old) had information about family ties through her experience of marriage, but there were important topics that Hanan and Khalil did not know about, so the latter rushed to attend courses to enable the marital relationship and prepare the fiancés for her, and found receptivity From his fiancée, she went to the Women’s Affairs Center, which started this project a few months ago as an important step to reduce the rate of divorce and domestic violence and increase society’s awareness of the idea of ​​marriage.

Khalil, who attended 5 meetings with his fiancée, each of which lasted for 4 hours, told Al Jazeera Net that he benefited greatly from the family planning session and how to organize the birth of children with a difference of many years between them, in order to raise them properly and fulfill their obligations, this was not known to him "I used to think That children are born continuously without interruption until a certain age, but family planning means the birth of a certain number of children in proportion to the economic conditions and ensuring a good life for them without oppressing any of them by providing their necessities to grow and raise properly.

As for Hanan, she tells Al Jazeera Net, "The knowledge that I possess through my mother's experience and advice, and then the experiences of my friends and relatives, may not be enough. There are topics that I did not know about, such as health issues, the safety of spouses and what it entails after marriage, in addition to how to manage the home economy." She has many girlfriends who do not have the ability to save and manage money, these topics may be related to problems between spouses that result in divorce and violence for simple reasons, so she advises everyone to join these courses and to have a license to create a successful family is better than falling into problems due to lack of Experience, it's never shameful."

Gaza youth between opponents and supporters of the "safe marriage" license (Al-Jazeera)

The poor economic situation caused the violence

Etidal Quneita, coordinator of the "Safe Marriage License" project at the Ministry of Development, spoke about this project to Al Jazeera Net, saying, "This project has been proposed more than once during the previous years and some institutions concerned with women's and family affairs worked on it, but this year it was seriously proposed after repeated cases of Violence and murder within the family due to the government’s keenness to build a healthy family, and it is working seriously to discuss this project to be approved and work on it in all regions of the Gaza Strip, and to train these young men and girls in the courtship stage according to a curriculum for many axes, including economic, health, psychological and legal.”

The project will be supervised by a committee comprising 6 ministries: the Sharia judiciary, health, justice, endowments, the Youth and Sports Authority, in addition to social development.

Quneita adds that the greatest focus in these courses is on the economic aspect, which is the cause of many disputes between spouses due to the poor situation in the Gaza Strip and generates a bad psychological state for men and pressure from the requirements of life that makes them in constant fights with their wives and problems that lead to either divorce or murder. By educating young people of both sexes on how to overcome economic crises without harming the family.

Rehabilitation of the fiancée in order to run a healthy family (Al-Jazeera)

Compulsory or optional?

"Compulsory decisions have tangible results, but optional decisions will not work," Zainab Al-Ghunaimi, head of the Center for Research and Legal Consultation in Women's Affairs, confirms to Al Jazeera Net, saying, "The safe marriage license is a good project that must be generalized to all institutions and work with it. The inability of young people of both sexes to adapt. From one environment to another, with many obstacles represented by poverty and unemployment up to tragic domestic violence between spouses, this is why the Women’s Affairs Center has been working on implementing this project with groups of betrothed, holding sessions of 5 days, every day for 4 hours, to discuss various topics and discuss it.”

She added, "We cooperated with the Sharia courts to provide us with the names of the fiancée and communicate with them to present this project to them, some of them agreed and encouraged the idea and some of them rejected it, and we aspire to reach the largest possible number, so this matter must be mandatory, such as the thalassemia examination, which no one cared about and now it has become mandatory. The greater the problems faced by the fiancée, without their knowledge of how to overcome them, the more violence will be generated and recorded in the annual statistics numbers.

Some girls work evening hours and some travel without parents, so you must learn self-defense (Al-Jazeera)

self defense courses

After many women were subjected to family murders, a large number of young women are eager to learn how to defend themselves.

Kung Fu coach Faten Al Naqla told Al Jazeera, "The idea of ​​a girl's self-defense is very important, given that some of them work for the evening hours and some of them travel without parents. It is necessary to learn how to self-defense, in addition to the wife's exposure to violence within the family, for example the woman who was killed by her husband after being handcuffed. Her hands were not able to defend herself, so there was encouragement from girls to continue courses in this sport, and despite the criticism that we faced on social media, we continue to do so and in all areas of the Gaza Strip.