Gaza wedding: 15-year-old groom, 14-year-old bride

I got a phone call from a friend asking if I wanted to photograph a wedding in Gaza. I told him I wasn’t interested but when he told me the groom was 15 years old and the bride was one year younger than him, I rushed to the location immediately.
After arriving I saw people celebrating in the street not far from the border between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip. Among them was a young Palestinian boy being carried on the shoulders of relatives and friends. I couldn’t believe that the boy was the groom until I asked him and he replied with a smile, “yes I am”.
After he finished celebrating at a party held a day before the official wedding, he went to play with friends in the street where they enjoyed flavored frozen drinks.
The second day I went back and continued covering the story, the official wedding was to take place that day. I was surprised when I saw the groom’s mother helping him put on his wedding suit. I couldn’t avoid thinking that it looked as if she was dressing him for school. After that he started combing his hair using a broken piece of a mirror.
I realized how poor the family was when I noticed that him and his wife share the three room house with the rest of the family, another nine people.
I asked the young groom if I could go with him into the house where the bride was getting prepared. When we entered the house, which was only next door, I realized that the family had not yet repaired the damage that was caused from an Israeli strike in 2009. When young Soboh looked at his bride and saw she was veiled, his face became frank and serious. At that moment the bride spoke to her groom and said, “lets smile and have our photo taken”. One thing she forgot to do before posing for the photograph was to remove her veil.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4434882,00.html

Palestinan Bedouin wedding in Gaza. Smile !!
ALL those ( from all religions ) who send their young kids to marry should be ponished.

 

I don't see the big deal here. Indeed, compared to the myriad of teenage pregnancies that occur in the West, I see no issue here whatsoever.

The couple in the story are obviously more mature than MGB.

 

She's not bad lookin' and seems upbeat about it all. Maybe she can help him with his paper route or blame Israel for everything or something.

 

At least the bride won't be bonking anyone in boxer shorts like teenagers do in America.

 

The natural progression of life is that people marry and have kids when they are most biologically prepared for it, and that is their teenage years and early 20's. It is a sickness that in industrial societies this is exactly the age group that is socially prohibited from doing what nature demands. My au-pairs and I had sex even before I was 15, and most westerners do. Hippocricy of culture?

 

More desperation from MGB. It's all going wrong for Israel, "Oh no". Palestine recognised, Syria not bombed, Iran soon to have some sanctions lifted. So what does he do, post an article from ytnet that shows a responsible young couple getting married with the full support, financially and emotionally, from their familes. Compare that situation with the west, for example, the UK, having the highest rate of under age pregnancies and abortion rates in Europe. Notice in the article the difference in behaviour of the 15 year old - in the west he would be getting drunk, in Gaza he is having an ice lolly but somehow the article tries to paint him as immature - desparate!. Ha

 

most teens in the west do not have sexual intercourse before age 15....

 

Is this an official marriage, registered by the government? I think thats very important detail. Because anyone can make a marriage ceremony for kids and proclaim them married, even in the west. It just wont have any legal meaning at all if they are not of age.

 

Please dont link my country with personal goals/agenda some posters might have here, MGB does not reprisent Israel, he may stand for some ppl in Israel that share his views.

 

Personal attack reported.

 

Muslims do because they are married

 

Why did you call them "Bedouin"????

 

I only reprisent myself .
My views are often NOT pro Arab or Muslim, as a free person from the west i'm happy not to be on their side.

- - - Updated - - -

Gazans are Bedouin !!

 

Where are their tents and herds? Or are these people fellahin like most Palestinians were?

 

In 2006 the teenage pregnancy rate in the USA increased for the first time in 10 years to 71.5 per 1,000 15–19 year olds. Around a third of these ended in abortion
Read more at http://www.fpa.org.uk/factsheets/teenage-pregnancy#x4FBoU23TGU8QewL.99

The number of UK conceptions to girls aged under 16 was 7,158 in 2009, compared with 7,586 in 2008 (a decrease of 5.6%).

It's a screwed up world. Not just in Gaza it seems. But at least there they get married.

 

Bedouins are a subgroup within the Arab minority in the State of Israel, with cultural, historical, social and political uniqueness. The Bedouin population in 2004 was comprised of approximately 130,000 in the Negev and 60,000 in northern and central Israel, making up about 3.5% of the Israeli population.

(snip)

Approximately half of the Bedouin community in the Negev, roughly 70,000 people, was living in unrecognized settlements in 2007. Most of them are not connected to water and electricity, and are distant from the main roads.

Most of the children in these villages study outside their place of residence and their dropout rates are high, among various reasons due to lack of access and public transportation to their schools. The population in these settlements is increasing rapidly with high rates of unemployment, poverty, and crime.

http://www.knesset.gov.il/lexicon/eng/bedouim_eng.htm

 

It may be jarring to twenty-first century western sensibilities but probably over the sweep of human history fifteen and fourteen year olds starting families is probably the norm.

None of us have to go far up the old family tree to find forebears of similar age.

In the book "Gone With The Wind" Scarlett O'Hara complains of being an old maid because she isn't married at sixteen. That was the culture of the day. Maybe not optimal, but it was workable. Maybe we waste too much of people productive lives with an excessively long childhood.

America, thanks to the Hussein Obama Depression, is going the other way with twenty-five year olds living single at home with mom and dad.

 

There is an issue - poverty.
Whilst there is much truth in western problems of unmarried teens getting preggers, there's also a serious problem in much of the world with poverty.
The young wedding is a problem I've seen many times in villages here.
Basically, the girl's family simply can't afford to keep her any more so choices are very limited.
Sending her off to be married may well be illegal but there isn't much else to do when you live in a wooden hut with dirt floors and have a family income of around US $20/month.
My first maid, although I was unaware at the time, never turned up for work because she was married off.
When I found that out, I accepted the second one without serious question even though she was only 14 years old.
It was work for me or get married so I took her in.
We sorted out part time school and gave her a clean place to live with hardly any actual work to do and she was paid as much as her father earned every month.
That, much as I wasn't really keen on her working for us, improved her family's lot and saved her from an early marriage.
This terrible issue is extremely common in many poverty stricken areas in Indonesia and the rest of the world.
I believe, education is the key to stopping the problem and could be provided easily if America didn't bother buying its next aircraft carrier but spent the cash on education instead.
A good education would remove so many problems and make a lot of friends whilst bombs only create misery and enemies.

 

A few generations ago, this sort of marriage was quite common in the Western nations. It is only the more modern lifestyle with its emphasis on higher eduation that has really caused the cultural shift. The only medical drawback would be if one or both of the couple weren't sexually mature, but you can't argue this is a much older person taking advantage of an immature teenager or that fairly recent history in the USA doesn't provide plenty of similar examples. All this shows is that Gaza has a less modern culture and a struggling economy.

 

Many were Bedouin affiliated with small villages in the West Bank until they were displaced in Gaza...

 

Cool! Like my real estate agent said "Get a lot while you're young!"

 

Of course poverty is an issue, but I don't see why young people getting married is so 'bad,' regardless of how much wealth they have. Obviously the vast majority of adolescents in the West- who spend most of their time playing video games- are not fit for marriage. That doesn't mean others are not.

 

Another issue to consider is that childbirth can often be very dangerous for a young female who isn't fully developed.

 

With due respect probably not. Beduins are Beduins. They are not Gazans. They make no permanent claim to any land. They have no notion of fixed borders or territory. They are literally like the sand in the wind. They move with the wind.

I was lucky enough to live with a Beduin family as part of my studies one summer in Israel years ago.

Beduins are the closet people left descended from the true Arab peoples. Today the people of the Middle East who self identify as Arabs do so because a shared pan-national vision not necessarily a Muslim religious one either.

Its complicated but the people of Gaza are descended from displaced Arab peoples who may have been living in pre 1967 Israel and fled during the War of Independence or more likely are decended from Arab peoples who came from other countries in the Middle East and moved into the area once called Palestine displacing Palestinians-they came in due to British immigration policies which flooded the area with Arab or Muslim Middle Easterners in an effort to prevent a Jewish state from forming.

Most Gaza citizens would identify as Arabs but they would not be Beduin. Beduin people are loath to live in any kind of urban or enclosed environment. The creeping urban development in the entire Middle East has caused them to keep moving and stay away from any population concentrations whenever they can. They loath crowds or condensed pockets of people and they loath buildings of any kind. They need to feel the wind at all times.

Now there are modern Beduins but they are still a minority.

The Beduins were famous for supporting the monarchy in Jordan. Without their support the monarchy would have been violently removed by Yasir Arafat during the 1967 Black Sabbath uprising.

Beduins have been some of the bravest and respected soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces as well as Royal Jordanian Army.

Beduins fought with Jews during the War of Independence and in 1967.

Beduins are really apolitical most of the time. To know a Beduin is to know someone who is fiercely independent, very controlled with emotions, people who speak very precisely and do not mince words. Mince words or lie to them and you get in serious trouble.

Gaza citizens are Arab peoples not Beduin Arabs. In fact Beduins would not live in Gaza City but travel through the outskirts.

They follow a continuous movement from Morrocco all the way to Afghanistan. It is in their blood to keep moving. When Israel and Arab countries have tried to place them in apartment complexes they leave them and refuse to use them.

Gaza citizens are in essence a trapped people. They were originally placed there as an open prison by Nasser to prevent them from entering Egypt.

Hamas that now runs Gaza does so through violence and constant threats of terror. I know people from Gaza. I have been there. Many have no quarrel with Israel but do not dare say so.

Gaza City is a nightmare. It is a crumbled series of overly condensed buildings, raw sewage and massive unemployment. It has a high suicide rate, mental illness rate, and high rates of diseases associated with dirty water.

At one point Israel through charities indirectly affiliated with a wing of Hamas that was non violent at the time was able to build roads, green-houses, schools, homes, mosques. Then the current violent wing of Hamas came down from Syria, wrestled control of Hamas from its non violent faction which originated from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, then violently removed Arafat's PLO.

Arafat took all the foreign aid ear-marked for Gaza and pocketed it. The people turned to Hamas voting for it because it was the only non corrupt alternative. It did not expect Hamas to turn on its own people and kill them because they were working in Israel or with Israeli development agencies.

Many Gaza citizens have directly suffered from missile attacks or armed responses from Israel to Hamas. Its a deliberate tactic. Hamas places its citizens in the way to get them injured and killed to get them to hate Israel.

To fight a war in Gaza is treacherous. It is either open desert with no shelter or a series of crumbling apartments in tight quarters where Hamas uses its schools, hospitals, mosques and the homes of its people as sites to shoot and launch war from.

Beduins have avoided this war pretty much by keeping a distance from it. They do not associate with the notion one fights over a desert. To them the desert is endless and only a mad man fights over sand.

 

Most have relationships with villages and relatives.

In KSA they have made accommodations for the Bedu.. They don't expect them to change their way of life in a couple of generations.

So.. they have set up camps along the old grazing routes. These camps have satellite dishes, small playgrounds, water tanks, and replenished fuel sources.

They belong to the Bedu in perpetuity...

These days they still herd their flocks of camels and goats but they also have a truck.. driven by the women.. The truck may be a water truck or just carry foodstuffs, tents etc.

Far different than I remember the Bedouin in the early 1950s.

They will of course eventually leave the life.... but they will not be forced ...

I spent a wonderful evening under the stars while they roasted a goat and sat around on a rug playing cards.