Gaza dating site helps widows find mates
Matchmaking portal follows rule of Islam by supporting polygamy, and banning photos and online chats
He was looking for a woman with particular attributes, hopefully a widow of a man killed in the struggle against Israel, without children, between 25 and 30, from southern Gaza. Her requirement was no less important: She was looking for a married man.
For Majdi and Ghada Abu Mustafa, their simultaneous search for a spouse turned out well, and the pair are now married.
“She is beautiful and a widow of a martyr at the same time,” Abu Mustafa said, using the word preferred by Palestinians for a killed fighter, often a terrorist to Israelis. She is the second of his two wives.
The couple met on Wesal — it means communion or reunion in Arabic — a first-of-its-kind matchmaking website in Gaza.
Its founder knows his demographic well: residents of the religiously conservative Gaza Strip, with its culture of resistance. Some 1,400 men have been killed in the three wars with Israel since 2008, leaving many widows who would like to remarry. Tradition, however, can make it difficult for them to wed single men.
Abu Mustafa, 34, a math teacher, said he had no specific reasons to get married again, but said he did wish to give “dignity” to a widow. Abu Mustafa’s first husband died during the conflict between Hamas and Israel in 2012.
Islam permits a man to have up to four wives. “Our men fight wars and die. Women stay alive,” said the site’s founder, Hashem Sheikha. “This is why my project supports polygamy.”
Sheikha, 33, a Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia, said the site has led to 160 weddings since it started in March, he said, and more than half the marriage requests involved men seeking a second or third wife (though not yet a fourth).
“Women who lost their men during the last three wars have difficult lives and few options,” said Reham Owda, a Gaza-based writer and analyst of women’s issues. “In most cases the husband’s family pressures the woman to marry the brother-in-law to control her life and seize any financial aid she receives.”
Owda added that if the widow’s husband is affiliated with a political party, it might pressure the woman to marry a man from same group.
Wesal not only facilitates marriages for widows, but also for the divorced and those who have never married.
Part of Wesal’s immediate success appears to be how closely it hews to Gazan tradition, despite the digital medium. When completing an application, people must address several questions important to those looking for a spouse here: place of residence, occupation, salary, marital status, number of children. And there are some traditional terms users must accept: “I swear by Allah the Great that all my information is accurate, and that I won’t use this website for entertainment.”
What Wesal does not have is profile photos or any online chatting functionality, to protect the privacy of women and because both would be considered “haram,” or forbidden under Islamic law, Sheikha said. “We are the halal version of American dating websites,” he said, using the word that connotes what is acceptable under Islamic tradition.
Wesal is ad-supported, plus a man and a woman who get married after meeting on the site are supposed to pay $100 each.
Though popular, with some 100,000 visitors in a population of 2 million people in Gaza, the website is not universally liked. Amal Seyam, the head of the nongovernmental Gaza’s Women Affairs Association, said the service appeared to have come at an opportune time to take advantage of changes in Gazan society.
“Polygamy has hit high rates in Gaza over the few past years, seemingly due to an increase in people’s religious inclination, especially after Hamas took power in 2007,” Seyam said, referring to the militant group that rules over Gaza.
Sheikha, Wesal’s founder, says he wants the site to challenge long-standing customs surrounding matchmaking in Gaza, and to give women more agency in the process.
The site has also found favor among divorced men. Rami Shatali, 38, works in a biscuit factory, earns less than 1,000 shekels a month, or not quite $300, and has four daughters living with him in the Al Maghazi refugee camp from an earlier marriage that ended in divorce.
His new wife, Majd Shatali, 26, also divorced and with a son, found him on Wesal in March. About 400 hundred people attended their wedding. From time to time, relatives of the groom sprayed glitter and wedding snow in the air.
“I felt like I was the happiest man in the world on my wedding day,” Shatali said, “because I found a woman who madly fell in love with me.”