Facebook blocks Nakba group page

A Facebook page promoting Nakba commemoration events in Jaffa was temporarily blocked overnight, Palestinian activists said Monday. Fatima Huleiwi, an activist with Jaffa Youth, told Ma'an that it was not the first time that Facebook had blocked the group's user page. "When we published material urging people to support hunger striking prisoners, our pages were blocked. Last night the invitation to an event commemorating the Nakba anniversary in Jaffa was also blocked on several accounts for hours," she said. Sometimes right-wing Israelis report violations on the group's Facebook pages, Huleiwi says, and as a result Facebook temporarily blocks the site for several hours. Jaffa Youth has to send a complaint to Facebook before they eventually unblock the page, she added. Members of Jaffa Youth will commemorate the 65th Nakba anniversary in Jaffa's Clock Square from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The event will include artistic activities and public discussions about the Nakba, with Dr. Thabet Abu Ras from Adalah, and Eitan Bronstein from Zochrot, or 'remembering,' among the participants. "We will continue to prepare for this event and will try to make it the most prestigious commemoration of the Nakba in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948," Mahmoud Abu Arisha, an activist from Jaffa Youth, told Ma'an. More than 760,000 Palestinians -- estimated today to number 4.8 million with their descendants -- were pushed into exile or driven out of their homes in the conflict surrounding Israel's creation in 1948. Around 160,000 Palestinians, who remained in Israel after 1948, now number around 1.36 million people, or 20 percent of the country's population.