In recent weeks, more and more reports have emerged from Gaza about families marrying off underage girls, about women pushed into complete dependence on men, and about men exploiting desperation by demanding sex in exchange for flour and medicine. In situations like these, the female body once again becomes a form of currency within a patriarchal social order that persists even inside catastrophe. But what is disturbing is not only the expansion of the phenomenon itself, but also the way the woman herself almost immediately disappears within the political readings of her suffering.

Child marriage in Gaza had been in gradual decline for more than a decade, but the war reversed the trend. Data collected by Gaza’s Supreme Sharia Court at the request of the Associated Press show that around one-fifth of the marriages registered over the past two years involved girls under the age of 18, some of them under 15. According to estimates by officials in Gaza, the real number is likely higher, since many marriages were never formally registered amid the chaos of war.

A girl handed over to an older man, a woman forced to comply with sexual demands in exchange for food, should provoke shock, perhaps even a call for protection, before any other question is asked. But once these........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)