KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip » He said he fell for "her ideas, her thoughts." She said he made her forget she was overweight, and "feel beautiful."

They flirted awkwardly at a conference in Amman, Jordan, where they met in 2011. Then, in flurries of text messages over a few weeks, they discovered they both were interested in photography and astronomy and craved the Saudi rice dish kabsa. Their mobile phones both had the Backstreet Boys song with the lyrics: "I don’t care who you are/Where you’re from/Or what you did/As long as you love me." They got engaged, exchanging rings and completing a contract to marry in an Islamic court.

But theirs is a love unfulfilled. Dalia Shurrab, 32, lives here in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, and Rashed Sameer Faddah, 35, in the West Bank city of Nablus. Romance is not among the humanitarian reasons for which Israel allows Palestinians to travel from here to there.

Now, the couple have started a Facebook campaign calling on President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to "Deliver the Bride to the Groom."

"I have the love of my life – he’s really warm and kind, he always tries to make me happy, he’s proud of me," Shurrab said, blushing and giggling as she shared their story. "When we cannot achieve what we are dreaming of, it dies slowly inside of us."

The frustrated couple are among thousands of Palestinians who human rights groups say are suffering from the separation of the West Bank and Gaza, especially since the militant Islamist Hamas movement took control of the coastal strip in 2007. In a report last year, two Israeli groups, B’Tselem and HaMoked, documented dozens of cases in which Israel, which lies between the territories, prevented Palestinians from passing through for weddings, funerals or other needs.

Israeli policies have "made daily life unbearable for families split between the two areas," the report argued. International law enshrines "the right to family life," it said, yet for many Palestinians, "the simplest matters – starting a family, living together with one’s spouse and children, and keeping in regular contact with the families of origins of both partners – can no longer be taken for granted."

A spokeswoman for Israel’s coordinator of government activities in the territories said she could not discuss individual cases like that of Shurrab and Faddah. Regarding the general situation, the agency said in an email that "when Hamas – a terror organization – came to power in Gaza, a policy was enacted" allowing exit into Israel "only for humanitarian cases and under the procedure to prevent unauthorized permanent residence" of Gazans in the West Bank.

Shurrab says she is focusing her appeals on Abbas, not Israel, because "he’s responsible for the Palestinian people." She imagines that Palestinian officials could somehow intervene on her behalf since they coordinate with Israel on security issues.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, Abbas’ spokesman, did not return a text message. The president’s media department did not respond to an email inquiry.

Xavier Abu Eid of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Abbas also heads, said in an email that the couple was in "an awful situation that reflects the nightmare that thousands of Palestinian families have due to Israeli apartheid policies," which "have been dramatically radicalized in the last few years."

Palestinians seek a state combining Gaza and the West Bank, but a passage linking the two, promised in the Oslo Accords two decades ago, has not been established.

In the early years after Israel captured the territories in the 1967 war, Palestinians moved freely between them. In 1991, during the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Israel began requiring individual exit permits from Gaza; they became rarer amid continuing violence.

After the second intifada started in 2000, Israel stopped updating its copy of the Palestinian population registry for Gazans who moved to the West Bank; the B’Tselem-HaMoked report says Israel itself estimates that more than 20,000 Gazans now live there without proper identification, which limits their movement and employment. Since 2009, the Israeli military has allowed relocation from Gaza to the West Bank only for immediate family members in specific categories, including orphans and elders needing care, but not lovebirds who yearn to marry.

Asmaa Zaghlul, a Gazan who has lived in Nablus since her 2003 wedding, said Shurrab should be careful what she wishes for. Without a West Bank ID card until 2011, Zaghlul said, she could not leave the city or get a job. She has returned to Gaza only once – not through Israel but through Jordan and Egypt – and regrets that her three children barely know their maternal grandparents and cousins.

"If she succeeds to come here and get married, she will have a very, very difficult life," Zaghlul said. "Maybe she can’t see this now because she is in love, but if she got the rational thinking, I would advise her to leave the whole thing and stay with the family."

The romance between Shurrab, a social-media marketer, and Faddah, a technician at an electricity company, was certainly unconventional in a conservative society in which many marriages are arranged. But their families reluctantly supported the union, and in 2012 Faddah’s father accompanied him to Gaza to make the engagement formal.

Shurrab said her parents had received more than 20 proposals from Gaza men, but they seemed to be after her salary, when she worked as a teacher, rather than her heart. Beyond love, she also imagines "my life in the West Bank will be easier than my life here in Gaza," since the economic and security situations are better. The couple have picked a paint color, peach, for the bedroom they hope to share soon.

Though her requests to marry in Nablus have been denied, Shurrab was allowed to go to the West Bank in May for a business creativity competition. Faddah came to see her at a Jericho hotel, and she thought about sneaking away with him, but worried it would harm the others in her group.

So they are left with text messages, the occasional love note carried by travelers from one place to the other, and sketchy Skype conversations dependent on Gaza’s intermittent electricity.

"What are you doing?" he asked when they connected one evening last week.

"I’m waiting for you," she replied.

She smiled when he told her he had white beans for lunch. She had white beans, too.

Every day, Shurrab irons the lacy white gown and veil she had a seamstress make for $400 three years ago, because, she said, "I want to be ready and look like a princess with Rashed."

She savors photographs from their four days together in Gaza: They stood at the sea, ate ice cream in the street, and had a formal engagement party at which Faddah placed shiny gold jewelry on her neck, wrist and ears, the bridegroom’s traditional "shabka" gift to his betrothed.

"We kissed here," she said, pointing to the doorway of the living room and giggling again. "After this moment, I felt like he belonged to me and he’s the only one I can live with for the rest of my life."

© 2015 The New York Times Company