GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Higher Sharia Court Council in the Gaza Strip issued a decision Feb. 7 granting a husband the right to file for divorce if his wife subjects him to verbal or physical abuse. The ruling has angered the feminist community, because it gives the husband the opportunity to divorce his wife while denying her rights to which she would otherwise be entitled in a divorce.

Prior to the decision, applying for a divorce based on verbal or physical abuse had been limited to women. This was so simply because men can divorce without providing a reason or even filing suit in court. If a wife filed for divorce and proved abuse, she did so with certain rights guaranteed — such as retention of the “mahr” (money and possessions paid by the groom or his family to the bride at the time of marriage), the right to obtain “mu’akhar” (money and possessions the groom is legally responsible for providing the wife, but not necessarily at the time of marriage) and receipt of the value of their furniture — as agreed upon in the marriage contract.

In 2015 in Gaza, 20,778 marriage contracts were concluded while 3,281 cases of divorce were registered, a rate of 15.8%, according to statistics published by the Sharia court Jan. 24.

Omar Nofal, chairman of the Sharia Appeals Court, told Al-Monitor that the new decision was issued to bring about “equality between men and women" by ending the women's monopoly to lodge divorce proceedings for abuse. Nofal said the court issued the decision after it became clear in several abuse cases lodged by wives that the husbands were in fact the victims, not the women. He said there are no statistics on the number of husbands abused​ at the hands of their wives in Gaza.