Israeli occupation forces arrested a 22-year-old Palestinian woman at a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron after she posted a comment on Facebook on Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Isra’a Hammad Abu Sneineh was detained at the Abu Al-Rish military checkpoint near the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
According to the Asra Media Office, Abu Sneineh was arrested at the military checkpoint located at the main entrance to the Old City, west of the Ibrahimi Mosque, as a result of a Facebook post she wrote about Al-Aqsa Mosque.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Centre (PPC), Israel had arrested more than 500 Palestinians, including women and children, as a result of their social media posts by May last year.
The occupation state uses its “Cyber Unit” to monitor Palestinian social media posts, the centre added.
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In December last year, Adalah – The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel said accused media giants of collaborating with Israeli authorities to censor user content.
According to official data, the group continued, in 2016 the unit submitted 2,241 content removal requests, of which 69 per cent of posts were duly removed. In 2017, the unit submitted a massive number of 12,351 content removal requests, 85 per cent of which were removed.
Months earlier, in July, the Israeli Knesset passed the first reading of what is called the Facebook Bill which would authorise the court to issue orders to delete internet content “if it harmed the human safety, public, economic, state or vital infrastructure safety”.
This was halted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of fears that under the bill’s format, police could ask a court to remove anything from the Internet without the person who put it online even being able to respond in court.
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