Young women and girls brought from the West Bank describe years of violence and exploitation, with little recourse due to their lack of legal status
A troubling pattern of exploitation has emerged across Israel, where Palestinian women and girls from the West Bank are being brought — often against their will — into polygamous marriages with Arab Israeli men, only to find themselves trapped in abusive situations with virtually no legal protection.
According to an investigation by Haaretz, thousands of women are believed to have entered Israel from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Jordan as second or third wives in polygamous households. Most come from economically vulnerable families, and many are brought in by force or under false pretences. Upon arrival, their lack of Israeli citizenship renders them almost entirely dependent on their husbands — unable to open bank accounts, access public healthcare, or seek legal assistance.
Sold for 1,000 Shekels
One woman, identified by Haaretz only as Intissar to protect her identity, described how her father sold her to a man for approximately 1,000 shekels — around $330 — before she had turned 18. Already a divorcée from an abusive first marriage contracted while she was still a minor, Intissar refused a second arrangement proposed by a relative from East Jerusalem more than two decades her senior. Her refusal was overruled by her father, who beat her into compliance and then accepted payment for her hand.
"Whenever we argued, he would remind me, 'I bought you from your father,'" Intissar, now 33, told Haaretz.
The abuse she describes was relentless — physical, sexual, verbal, and emotional — beginning on the first day of the marriage. When she complained that her husband's grandchildren were harassing her daughters from the union, she was beaten for a week straight, with her ribs broken. Her eldest daughter attempted to take her own life twice.
Her case only came to the attention of authorities in 2024, when one of her daughters arrived at school with visible bruises. A school guidance counsellor alerted police, her husband was arrested, and he eventually accepted a plea deal conviction for rape and violence. Intissar has since reunited with her daughters and secured temporary shelter, though she remains without a permanent residence permit — a humanitarian application was rejected by the interior minister in 2024.
A Systemic Failure
Rawia Aburabia, a senior lecturer at Sapir Academic College's law school who has studied cross-border polygamous marriages extensively, told Haaretz that the Islamic tradition of the groom paying the bride's family — money nominally intended for the bride — has in practice become a mechanism of ownership.
"Marriages often whitewash the trafficking of women," Aburabia said. "This is especially the case with minors or women with no status who are brought in as second wives."
She described Palestinian women as occupying the most vulnerable position in this dynamic: "The Palestinian woman is at the bottom of the ladder — she has no status, is dependent completely on the mercy of men, and has no family here or sources of support."
According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, at least 2,400 Muslim men in the south of the country fathered children with more than one woman in 2023, with at least one of those women lacking Israeli citizenship. Experts cited by Haaretz believe the actual scale of polygamous arrangements is considerably higher, as many go unreported and not all result in children.
A Child Sold as a Third Wife
Among the most extreme cases reported by Haaretz is one that recently reached the courts: a woman from Hebron sold her 13-year-old daughter as a third wife to a 40-year-old man from the Bedouin town of Hura in southern Israel. A written contract set the price of the child at 38,000 shekels, with monthly payments of 1,500 shekels to the mother. A clause stipulated that sexual relations would not begin until the girl turned 16. The Be'er Sheva District Court sentenced the man to 27 months in prison. The mother was convicted of human trafficking offences, though her sentence remains under a judicial gag order. The girl was placed under social services protection.
Haaretz also spoke with a 37-year-old woman identified as Doa, who has spent a decade living without legal status in an unrecognised Bedouin village in the Negev. Married at 25 to a man twenty years her senior from a family in financial distress in Jenin, she was told her future husband was divorced — a claim that proved false upon her arrival in Israel, where his first wife remained in the household.
Doa describes living in a small, uninhabitable shack near the first wife's house, surviving on 1,400 shekels a month from childminding work and 800 shekels in child benefits — the latter controlled entirely by her husband. Last September, he violently attacked her in front of their children after she used his credit card to buy food.
Her four children hold Israeli citizenship, meaning that divorce under sharia law would likely result in their remaining with their father. "If I divorce, they'll be taken from me," she told Haaretz. "There's no law to protect me."
A social worker in a Bedouin area in the south, speaking to Haaretz under the pseudonym Houda, said she was personally aware of around 130 women in polygamous marriages without legal status — yet her capacity to assist them is severely restricted by ministerial regulations barring social services from aiding undocumented residents unless they have been assigned an official identification number.
Authorities Respond
Israel's Social Affairs Ministry stated that it provides services to residents based on legal criteria, though it noted exceptions are made to protect women facing tangible danger on a case-by-case basis. The Justice Ministry said it works to combat polygamy and that trafficking victims are formally recognised through a dedicated inter-agency committee. The Israeli police told Haaretz that a dedicated polygamy unit was established in the Southern District at the end of 2024, and that investigations, arrests, and prosecutions are actively being pursued.
The closure of West Bank crossings following October 7, 2023, has reduced the flow of women into such arrangements, Haaretz notes — though this was an incidental consequence of security policy rather than a deliberate intervention. Experts warn the phenomenon has not disappeared, with some men now maintaining second wives who remain in the West Bank while the husband travels between households.
Photo: Haaretz