Hawzah News Agency-A new report from a Palestinian rights organization has found that the number of incidents in which people - including many journalists - have been arrested for social media posts has drastically increased in the last year, leading to worries over an Israeli crackdown on the right to freedom of expression.

“Social media sites are… an efficient window to empower journalists and Palestinians in general to express their opinions freely,” Mousa Rimawi, author of the report and Director of the Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms (Mada) said.

“[But] systematic surveillance and observation by Israeli Occupation Authorities [means they have become] an open platform for persecution and oppression relating to users’ opinions.”

A delegation from Facebook met with Israel officials in September for what were described as “successful” talks.

This week, the activist collective Palestinian Information Centre (Pic) reported that at least 10 of their administrators’ accounts for their Arabic and English Facebook pages - followed by more than two million people - have been suspended in the wake of Facebook’s meeting with Israel, seven of them permanently.

Facebook gave no explanation why other than that members had violated Facebook's 'Community Standards', Pic member Rami Salaam told. The move was about “preventing our voice from reaching out to the world,” rather than incitement, he said.

A 2015 report found that 96 per cent of Palestinians said their primary use of Facebook was for following news.

Since last October at least 150 arrests have been made on charges of ‘incitement’, but Palestinians and digital rights monitors say that in many cases posts are not relevant, or critical of Israeli Regime policy, rather than direct calls to violence.