The Logic of Continuity in Hamas

Child marriage in Gaza is often described as a byproduct of poverty or war. That explanation is incomplete. When a minor is married, she cannot give meaningful consent. Sexual relations under those conditions constitute abuse; in most modern legal frameworks they meet the definition of statutory rape. The harm is not only legal but physical and psychological. It is not a marginal phenomenon but one that raises fundamental questions about how girls are positioned within the social order itself.

The risks are well documented. Pregnancy in early adolescence is associated with higher rates of obstructed labor, hemorrhage, infection, and long-term injury, including fistula and chronic reproductive complications. Girls whose bodies are not yet fully developed face elevated risks to their own health and to the survival and well-being of their infants. These are not abstract concerns but predictable, measurable outcomes that have been repeatedly documented across settings where early marriage persists. The bond between mother and infant is compromised to say the least.

To understand why such practices endure, one must look beyond immediate conditions to the underlying framework. In the 1988 Hamas Charter, women are not framed as independent political actors but as transmitters—responsible for educating, shaping, and reproducing the next generation within a defined ideological horizon. The emphasis is not on individual autonomy but on continuity: the preservation and transmission of the collective through the family. Reproduction, in this framework, is not only biological but cultural and psychological, linking the body of the woman to the endurance of the group. There is no autonomy in Hamas’s hyper shame honor culture.

This framework intersects with a broader shame–honor systems in which the regulation of female sexuality is central. Honor is not an abstract value but is located, in practical terms, in the control of the girl’s body—her sexual status, her marriageability, and her conformity to expected norms. The boundary between its members and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)