Bedouin man convicted of polygamy in landmark verdict

Gegavim: “The court has made a clear and important statement: Polygamy is a criminal offense, and it will not be tolerated in the State of Israel.”

By AARON REICH
A gavel in a court of law (photo credit: REUTERS)
A gavel in a court of law
(photo credit: REUTERS)
A Bedouin man from Israel's South was convicted this past week by the Beersheba Magistrate's Court for the crime of polygamy in a major step forward in enforcing polygamy laws in Israel.
The man was sentenced to seven months in prison, and this is the second such conviction of polygamy since Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit passed directives on enforcing the law. The previous case was in 2019, when a man was convicted of polygamy but initially only sentenced to community service. However, a district court later overturned this ruling and sent him to prison.
Responding to the new verdict, the NGO Regavim said “The court has made a clear and important statement: Polygamy is a criminal offense, and it will not be tolerated in the State of Israel.”
While polygamy is officially illegal in Israel, it remains present in the Bedouin sector, where it largely goes unregulated. The practice remains a serious issue in Bedouin society, and causes severe harm to many of its most vulnerable members.
According to an inter-ministerial report from 2018 brought forth by then-Justice Ministry director-general Emi Palmor, there were approximately 6,200 polygamous marriages in Israel, representing a stunning 18.5% of families in the approximately 250,000-person Bedouin sector. This represented an even higher polygamy rate than in Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
However, the marriages are not easy to exit, no matter how unhappy they are, due to the Bedouin community traditionally frowning on divorce and it often leading to mothers losing custody of her children.
In addition, these marriages are often more prevalent among the poorer of Bedouin society, where they are motivated by financial incentives. According to Regavim, which has studied and monitored polygamy in the Bedouin sector for years, the practice is heavily motivated by National Insurance (Bituach Leumi) payments and benefits.
But hopefully, this verdict is the next step in ensuring that “Polygamy will no longer be treated as a private issue that affects members of individual households; its impact on the entire nation has finally been recognized. Israeli taxpayers have been footing the bill for far too long,” Regavim operations director Yakhin Zik said in a statement.
“We congratulate former justice minister Ayelet Shaked and former Justice Ministry director-general Emi Palmor for their leadership in bringing about this much-needed change, and hope that strict sentences, coupled with educational initiatives and awareness campaigns among young adults in the Bedouin sector, will bring an end to polygamy in Israel once and for all.”
Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.


Related Tags
marriage
Polygamy
bedouin