GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Facebook chat that young Yasser discovered between his wife and one of her friends was reason enough for him to accuse her of infidelity and divorce her.

Yasser, 27, who requested that his full name not be revealed, considered his wife’s chat with one of her Facebook friends a “cruel act of betrayal.” This was not the first time that he had seen conversations between his spouse of almost three years and strangers of the opposite sex, conversations that fall contrary to Palestinian society’s customs and traditions.

“I repeatedly warned my wife against chatting with strange men, but she kept doing so," the young man told Al-Monitor. "She claimed that it was only for fun, that nothing was out of the ordinary and that she did not disclose any personal information about herself. But I was shocked by the last chat I saw between her and another man, who called her 'my love.' That was the last straw that drove me to end our marriage.”

Social networking sites, particularly Facebook, have become one of the common causes for divorce in the Palestinian territories, according to Chief Justice Sheikh Yusuf Adeis.