TEL AVIV — A 14-year-old Palestinian girl from Hebron, Fatma Sema, fled her home to Israel a few weeks ago, allegedly to escape a forced marriage in which she was living under slave-like conditions, according to a report in the Jerusalem-based Palestinian publication Al Quds.
The newspaper detailed the reasons that allegedly pushed Sema to flee, centered on what she said was a marriage that she was forced to enter because of her family’s financial distress. The events led her to try suicide multiple times, as well as several attempts to flee her husband’s home. She considered stabbing an Israeli soldier so she would be imprisoned.
According to the report, Sema was forced to marry an Arab Israeli, a Bedouin living near Beersheva. Fatma had lived in poverty with her family in Hebron with five sisters.
Sema’s neighbors said she was given over to social services after a suicide attempt, but this did not protect her from living with her husband, where a family acquaintance said she lived as a “slave.”
One of the neighbors said that, on one occasion, while still bleeding after cutting her wrist, Sema tried to go to an IDF roadblock to stab an Israeli soldier, hoping to find salvation in Israeli prison. This attempt was also unsuccessful and Sema was returned to her family in Hebron, the neighbor said.
The neighbor added that Sema was just 13 when she was forced to marry the Arab Israeli after he paid her father 10,000 shekels (apx. $2,850). Sema disappeared after going to live with her husband in southern Israel, but appeared again a few weeks ago after fleeing his house, where a neighbor alleged Sema experienced severe violence from her husband.
Sema’s tragedy, according to a family acquaintance, climaxed when she tried to turn to a sharia court to get the marriage contract terminated, but her father opposed this and even insisted that his daughter return to her husband.
After one of the court hearings, and in light of the husband’s refusal to grant her a divorce as well as her father’s insistance that she return to her husband, the sharia judge rejected her appeal for a divorce and scheduled a future hearing, the newspaper reported. The distraught young girl then fled to an IDF roadblock and gave herself up to the soldiers there, asking to be arrested and put in prison in order to escape her difficult living conditions.
The neighbor said that the soldiers were already aware of Sema and her story, but this time sent her to a young women’s shelter near Jerusalem.
Sheikh Rashad Salhab, head of the sharia court in Hebron, said that a hearing has been scheduled and the marriage contract is expected to be terminated on the grounds that Sema isn’t prepared to be a wife because of her young age. Salhab confirmed that she fled to the Israeli soldiers immediately after the last court hearing.
The newspaper added that Israeli authorities have arrested the husband on human trafficking charges.
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