Rana* and Mahmoud were 23 when they fell in love. They met six years ago at Al-Quds University on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where shy glances exchanged across crowded lecture halls soon turned into long conversations that spilled into the corridors and stretched late into the evening.
She is from Ramallah while he is from Jenin, so after graduation Mahmoud took a government job in Ramallah to be closer to Rana despite still living in Jenin. By 2023, they were engaged.
But life under Israel’s military occupation, and an economy in free fall, soon put a strain on their relationship. Amid the war on Gaza and the deepening financial crisis in the West Bank, Mahmoud’s salary was cut by nearly two-thirds to around $650 a month.
In Ramallah, where the minimum cost of living ranges from $900-1,500, the pay cut made it impossible to sustain the life they had planned. He could no longer afford regular visits to his fiancée, dinners out, gifts, or even to begin furnishing a home. With the cost of commuting between Jenin and Ramallah, his entire salary would be gone.
Rana urged Mahmoud to rent an apartment in Ramallah to avoid the long commute through checkpoints so they could spend more time together. “Distance breeds estrangement,” she told +972 Magazine. “I felt Mahmoud becoming so far from me. The affection between us faded, and the longing kept turning into arguments.”
Mahmoud tried to meet her expectations, but felt trapped between the financial reality and family obligations. “My mother is in Jenin, and I’m the youngest of my siblings,” he told +972. “She doesn’t want any of her children living far from her. I can’t abandon her.”
The crack soon grew into a gulf. In January 2025, they broke off the engagement.
The story of Rana and Mahmoud reflects a wider trend across Palestinian society. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of divorces across both the West Bank and Gaza rose by 45 percent between 2012 and 2022, with the West Bank alone showing a 41 percent increase. Sharia courts also report that between 2018 and 2023, roughly half of all engagements ended before the wedding.
While the number of divorces registered in sharia courts in the West Bank fell slightly — by 8.5 percent — between 2022 and 2023, the number of registered marriage contracts declined more sharply, dropping by 11.7 percent.
Comprehensive nationwide data for the past two years has yet to be released, but local figures suggest the upward trend is continuing: In 2025, the northwestern West Bank city of Qalqilya recorded a divorce rate of 27.6 percent, the highest in the past four years according to Sheikh Mohammad Qassem Salameh, head of the city’s sharia court.
While divorces and breakups have also increased elsewhere in the Arab world, many young Palestinians describe distinct pressures shaped by the Israeli occupation: shrinking job opportunities, reduced salaries, and mobility restrictions that make it difficult — and often impossible — for couples to spend time together.
“It cannot be denied that the deteriorating political and economic situation has contributed to the rising [divorce] rates,” family counselor Naim Najm, based in Nablus, told +972. He noted that marriage rates rose in 2017 during a period of relative stability, but that numbers have declined significantly since October 7.
Even with the recent spike, Palestine still records comparatively low divorce rates, according to Sheikh Ata Al-Muhtasib, a judge on the Palestinian Supreme Sharia Court. “Some Arab countries have higher divorce rates — Qatar and Jordan, for example,” he explained.
That divorce rates are lower than some Arab countries does not necessarily indicate stronger marriages and could reflect social pressures, economic constraints, and political factors that make separation more difficult. Still, Al-Muhtasib noted, divorce rates in Palestine fluctuate with the society’s broader mood.
Nada Saba’neh, a family counseling officer at Qabatiya Court in Jenin, concurred. “Structural pressures such as economic collapse and movement restrictions play a significant role in destabilizing families,” she explained. “Families suffer from economic pressures that lead to psychological and social insecurity.”
‘When a man has no money, he becomes someone else’
Such was the case for Sana and Nader, a couple that lived in the village of Saffa, outside of Ramallah, with their two daughters.
Before October 7, Nader worked as a chef cooking burgers at a restaurant in Israel for up to 14 hours a day, earning around $3,000 a month. He was rarely home, but the family was financially stable.
When Israel revoked Palestinian work permits after the war began, he lost his job. For a year, he remained unemployed, spending his days frustrated at home, increasingly withdrawn and volatile, often cursing at their children.
Sana encouraged him to return to work in Israel without a permit, as many Palestinians have done despite the risks. He refused. “I’m not risking my life for you and your daughters,” she recalled him saying.
As tensions built, Sana became the family’s sole provider, taking on two full-time jobs. She worked five days a week in government documentation for around $800 a month, and six days a week as a fitness trainer, earning another $650 a month. Her income covered their daughters’ school fees and basic expenses.
“When a man has no money, he becomes someone else,” Sana told +972. “I tried to support him, to stand by his side, but I discovered he was a different person.”
The arguments got more intense. When she again raised their financial situation, he told her to get out of their house.
Sana initially wanted a divorce, but her father refused, concerned about the family’s reputation. At the end of 2025, after two years, she filed for khula — a woman-initiated divorce under Islamic law. The court ruled in her favor at the first hearing. She now lives in a rented apartment in Ramallah, closer to her work and the children’s school.
Najm, the family counselor, says such breakdowns often reflect couples’ inability to withstand sustained stress. “Mutual understanding is the key to family stability,” he explained.
‘I gave up everything to make it easier’
For other couples, mobility restrictions — long a feature of daily life under occupation — have become insurmountable. In the summer of 2024, Rawan, a Muslim woman from Nablus, married Nadim, a Christian man from Nazareth, after he converted to Islam to be with her. “He changed everything for me,” Rawan said. “His religion, his life, where he lived.”
Nadim, an Israeli citizen, worked as a security guard in Israel. If he had remained in Nazareth, his commute would have been 10 minutes. Instead, he rented a house in Nablus for around $650 a month to live with Rawan, while continuing to pay municipal taxes on his home in Nazareth.
The drive from Nablus to Nazareth takes about two hours without traffic. In reality, he spent far longer navigating checkpoints and unpredictable delays. He left home hours before his shifts to account for the uncertainty.
Over time, Rawan said, the strain of distance changed him. “He became someone else,” she recalled. “The pressure, the commute, being apart.”
The couple considered moving to Nazareth, but Rawan required a permit to enter Israel — and permits were no longer being issued. They felt trapped.
“He started to take it out on me,” she said. Arguments turned violent and he hit her, on more than one occasion. “I thought it would pass. I thought once things calmed down, once we found a way to be together, he would go back to who he was.”
As Christmas approached, Rawan decided to risk entering Nazareth without a permit to spend the holiday with her husband. Nadim initially refused to let her attempt to cross, fearing she could be shot by soldiers. They ultimately agreed she would try to pass through the Jalama checkpoint north of Jenin hidden in his car, believing the legal consequences would be lighter if caught there.
They were arrested at the checkpoint. Israeli authorities detained Nadim for one day on suspicion of smuggling a Palestinian into Israel. Rawan was held for two days in a detention room next to the checkpoint — “handcuffed, blindfolded, and without food or water,” she recounted.
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When she was released (after signing papers stating that she was barred from entering Israel without a permit, and being warned that future attempts could result in a prison sentence), she expected her husband to be waiting for her. Instead, he had informed her father that he wanted a divorce.
“He didn’t call me,” she said. “He called my father.”
The marriage lasted just seven months. Rawan agreed to the divorce and relinquished her rights to their shared property. “I gave up everything to make it easier,” she said, her eyes full of tears. “I just wanted it to be over.”
*Interviewees are identified using pseudonyms to protect their identity.
This article was published in collaboration with Egab, a tech start-up empowering journalists from the Global South to get published in the international media.
