The Palestinian Prisoners Center for Studies said that 450 Palestinians including women and children have been arrested since the outbreak of the Jerusalem Intifada in October 2015 on charges of “incitement” on Facebook.
Media spokesman for the Center Riyad al-Ashqar explained that Israel uses what Palestinian youths publish on social media sites as pretexts to detain them on charges of incitement and impose actual or administrative imprisonment sentences on them.
Ashqar pointed out that the detainees included journalists children and women adding that an administrative detention order was issued against the Jerusalemite female prisoner Sabah Fir’oun and renewed four times in a row for the same charge.
Ashqar said that Israel has established a special cyber unit to record all that is published by Palestinian youths. Israeli courts claim that posting statements honoring martyrs or videos documenting the Israeli crimes indicates a psychological readiness to carry out anti-Israel attacks.
He noted that the Israeli prosecution presents to the court a file containing dozens of printed Facebook posts as evidence of the Palestinians’ willingness to harm Israel’s security.
He cited the case of the Jerusalemite journalist Sanaa Dweik who spent 6 months in Israeli jails on charges of incitement because she used words like “Intifada” and “martyrs” in her press work though these terms are widely used in the Palestinian and Arab media.
In similar cases the Israeli authorities imposed an administrative detention order that was renewed twice against the ex-prisoner Su’ad Erziqat 28 and sentenced Ahmad Sa’ida 17 to 11 months on charges of incitement on Facebook.
Since these arbitrary sentences were not enough for Israel according to Ashqar those released are ordered not to use Facebook for a certain period of up to months and they may be fined or held in house arrest.
Ashqar stressed that arresting Palestinians because of their opinions is contrary to the international conventions and laws that allow freedom of expression calling on the international community to intervene and put an end to the Israeli violations.
