April 7, 2026 – Ghadeer Abu Matar, a mother of two, faces difficult conditions as a new low-pressure weather system exacerbates the suffering of displaced people in the Nuseirat camp in the center of the Gaza Strip. Heavy rains have caused flooding in several tents set up on low-lying ground. Abu Matar fled from the Al-Bureij camp to seek refuge in Al-Nuseirat after an attack on her home, during which her husband was injured, leading to the amputation of his foot. He is currently receiving treatment in Egypt. The lack of resources, due to the ongoing Israeli blockade of essential humanitarian goods, and the absence of alternative sites to relocate displaced individuals are rapidly deteriorating living conditions – Photo: Doaa Albaz / Activestills
By Shojaa Al-Safadi
The destruction of the judicial system in Gaza has deprived hundreds of thousands of women of the ability to claim inheritance, divorce, or obtain custody of their children. “This is the reality for women in Gaza. We have been left behind,” says Maysoun, a mother of two.
When S.Y. returned to where her home once stood, she couldn’t recognize a single wall. The street had collapsed, reduced to dust and gray cement. What caught her attention first was the silence: no voices, no movement. Smoke and dust from the shattered concrete filled the air.
The houses had collapsed on top of each other, as if the neighborhood had collapsed on itself.
She started looking for something familiar, any trace indicating it was her house: a door, a wall, a piece of furniture. There was nothing intact, only fragments buried under the rubble.
“When I returned, my house was destroyed,” she recounted. “I lost my husband, I lost my children, I lost my house. I came back, and there was nothing left. Not even the walls. And I didn’t even have any personal belongings or official documents to assert my rights.”
Over 16,000 women in Gaza have lost their husbands since October 2023, leaving one in seven families now led by a woman.
On December 4, 2023, the Israeli army released a video showing the demolition of the main courthouse in Gaza, one of the many judicial institutions destroyed across the territory as part of a broader campaign to target judicial institutions and personnel responsible for law enforcement, with the aim of facilitating social collapse.
For women like S.Y., the consequences of this social collapse have deprived them of any legal means to assert their rights through the judicial system, given the destruction of the judicial system’s capacity to handle family matters.
This legal void has left hundreds of thousands of women unable to claim inheritance, formalize a divorce, retain custody of their children, or obtain documented protections under Palestinian personal status law.
For these women, murder was not the end of what Israel took from them.
“I Can’t Do Anything to Get My Rights”
S.Y., 33, agreed to speak to Mondoweiss anonymously, fearing reprisals from relatives. Originally from the eastern part of the al-Bureij refugee camp, she is currently taking refuge with her sister in al-Nuseirat.
Before the war, she described her life with her children as “ideal, happy, fulfilling.” It was her daughter she felt closest to.
She spoke softly, choosing her words carefully. “My daughter was like my best friend,” she said. “Her name was Malak, which means ‘angel.’ And she really was an angel.”
Malak’s two sisters were killed with their father when Israel bombed their family home. S.Y. had gone out to buy oil and flour and became the sole survivor.
Israeli bombardments destroyed civil registry records and courts, and S.Y.’s house is beyond the so-called “yellow line,” which cuts Gaza almost in two.
Her house is in an area currently controlled by the Israeli army, so completely destroyed that even the land has become worthless, both legally and practically.
She cannot find a photo, marriage certificate, or property title. She communicates by phone with her husband’s nephew about the inheritance, but there’s nothing left to inherit, and no court to decide, even if there were one.
My suffering didn’t stop with this loss,” she said. “No organization has contacted me to offer support. In our conservative society, a widow or a divorced woman becomes a heavy burden. We receive no psychological support or financial aid. We only receive silence, or worse.”
She said she tried to resolve inheritance issues with her husband’s family but they started pressuring her to give up her rights, based on the fact that a woman without legal recourse and without courts has no means of leverage.
“I tried to reach an amicable agreement with my husband’s family regarding the inheritance,” she said. “But there is no legal authority to turn to in the total absence of law. I can do nothing to assert my rights. Just an indefinite waiting period. Women are oppressed, and their rights are completely lost.”
S.Y. said she lived in a state of daily anxiety, constantly worrying about the future in the absence of any legal recourse. “No one can provide me justice,” she said.
Israelis Destroyed the Courts
Prior to October 2023, the family court system in Gaza included religious courts applying Sharia law and civil courts of first instance in Gaza, Deir al-Balah, and Khan Younis.
Palestinian women relied on these institutions to assert their rights in matters of inheritance, divorce, child custody, and alimony.
On October 9, 2023, Israeli forces bombed the headquarters of the Palestinian Bar Association in Gaza, destroying its official records. UN human rights experts condemned what they called the “completely gratuitous destruction of the judicial infrastructure in Gaza.”
During a UN human rights hearing in early 2026, a representative from Palestinian women’s organizations confirmed that the courts had been destroyed even though the organizations continued to function, and the resulting legal void relegated dispute resolution to displaced camps and improvised mediation sessions.
Amal Syam, director of the Women’s Business Center, said these mediation efforts now take place “even under the rubble.”
Wael Abuassi, a family law specialist in Gaza, now works under extremely restricted conditions, relying on phone calls and informal meetings rather than official courtrooms. Like many legal professionals in Gaza, he works without an office or an operational judicial system, trying to mediate in a context where law enforcement mechanisms no longer exist.
The problem is the lack of executive authority,” Abuassi said. “Without an operational system capable of enforcing court decisions, any judgment is just ink on paper.”
S.Y. said she is still waiting, not knowing what justice might look like in a place where even the evidence of its existence has been erased.
“I hope conditions improve,” she said. “Maybe one day I can assert my rights in court, if security and stability return to Gaza. But after what Israel did here, what they destroyed… I really don’t know if all that will come back. I don’t know if I will come back.”
Divorce and Displacement
D.S., 28 (a pseudonym), had been married for only two months when Israeli bombardments began; military orders forced her and her husband to head south on foot, along roads where bodies had not yet been collected.
Her house was completely destroyed, as was her husband’s makeup shop in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
As she speaks, D.S. sits inside a crowded tent, where thin fabric walls let in the heat, noise, and voices of neighboring families. Her daughter, Sara, stays close, moving from her lap to the floor.
There is no privacy; every word is within earshot of others. The tent traps heat in the summer and lets in the cold in winter. Neighboring families are close enough to hear every argument, every child crying, every prayer recited in the night.
“We were on foot,” she said. “We saw corpses. We were hungry, thirsty, surrounded by scenes of death. Living in a tent is a nightmare for me.”
She told Mondoweiss that in the early days, they slept on the ground in “deprived conditions of the most basic necessities of life.”
“A woman like me had to wear the hijab 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, because we shared the tent with many families,” she explained.
They found themselves in the Maghazi refugee camp, one of hundreds of overcrowded camps in southern Gaza. Nearly 250,000 women and girls lived in catastrophic conditions marked by extreme food shortages. D.S.’s daughter, Sara, was not yet two years old.
Life in the camp followed a relentless daily rhythm. “We woke up very early; most people in the displaced camp wake up at six in the morning, and everything gets loud, no one can sleep,” she said.
“I made breakfast sandwiches with the available food, then started the daily obstacle course: washing clothes, picking up wood to start a fire, fetching drinking water, filling a small reservoir for the bathroom.”
Every day, her husband went to look for work or money in an economy that Israel had destroyed. The Israeli blockade on goods and money had driven prices to unaffordable levels. He returned empty-handed, and the burden of this situation broke what was left between them.
<p"The difficulties of life accumulated disagreements," she said. "The screams became daily, for the most trivial reasons. I suffered physical violence, until it became impossible to continue our married life."
Her husband eventually pronounced divorce in absentia – without lawyers, without a court, without any judicial process. Under Palestinian personal status law, D.S. was entitled to alimony, housing, and legal protections for her daughter, Sara. She received nothing.
“I didn’t receive alimony, even though the law obliges the husband to pay it and considers it a fundamental right,” she said. “But there was no legal way to force him to do it. It just happened, and I had to accept it.”
Sara will soon be two years old. She has no legal protection, no formal rights, and there is currently no court to establish either one.
“Reality has guaranteed her no rights,” D.S. said.
<p"My daughter deserves better than what this war left her. I wish women's organizations could act and provide legal support to divorced women."
Deprived of Seeing Her Children
Maysoun, 32, a pseudonym used for her safety, has spent nearly two years unable to return home after her husband kicked her out.
She used to live in the Shati refugee camp, but she is now displaced in Deir al-Balah, where she lives in a tent, a thin fabric stretched over uneven ground, offering little protection from heat, cold, or the passage of time.
It’s not a place that belongs to her, just a place where she waits. Around her, families come and go, structures change, and nothing seems stable or permanent, reflecting the legal void she lives in.
Her husband has refused to let her see their children. He has refused to officially divorce her, leaving her in legal limbo: still a wife in the eyes of the law but without any of the protections that status is supposed to confer.
“I feel blocked from everywhere,” she told Mondoweiss. “My family tried to resolve the issue and convince him to officially divorce me, but it was to no avail.”
Her children are named Basem and Bayan. Basem is five years old, Bayan is three. For nearly two years, Maysoun has not seen them.
<p"Every occasion, every holiday, every date brings back painful memories," she said. "I remember, and I feel pain in every detail."
<p"I wish I could have celebrated my children's birthdays with them," she explained. "I remember the last birthday before the war, how happy I was. I had prepared their favorite chocolate cake."
This last birthday was before October 2023. Basem and Bayan have had several birthdays since, but Maysoun has not been present at any of them. Her only contact with them sometimes came through her ex-husband’s sister, usually a brief phone call in someone else’s discretion. She had no legal means to demand more.
Family mediation, the informal system that had always coexisted with official courts, became the only possible recourse, but the answer it gave her was unequivocal: she would remain in uncertainty – no divorce, no rights, no visitation rights with her children.
After the start of the ceasefire in October 2025, she tried again through the partially reopened legal channels, but law enforcement remained almost non-existent.
Her husband’s conditions were final: she had to give up everything, including alimony, property, and custody of Basem and Bayan, in exchange for the divorce he denied her.
<p"In the end, I was forced to give up all my rights in exchange for the divorce," she said. "Everything, in exchange for freedom from a man who had already left. That is the reality for women in Gaza. We are abandoned."
April 14, 2026 – Mondoweiss – Translation: Chronique de Palestine
