RAMALLAH, February 18, 2015 (WAFA) – The online social networking website Facebook has removed the page of the Hamas-affiliated Shehab news agency, after its followers had reached about 2.5 million users.

Followers of the page have reported their inability to view its content. Shehab is one of the widely spread social networking websites in the Palestinian territories, and reports on daily news related to the West Bank and Gaza.

Facebook administration cited graphic violence as the reason behind deleting the page.  

There have been several moves by Facebook against Palestinian-run pages, citing hate and violence pretences. In March 2011, Facebook removed a group run by Palestinian activists calling for a third Palestinian uprising.

According to Israeli media, then Minister of Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Yuli Edelstein sent a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, demanding that the page be shut down immediately. The page was later removed after it had gathered more than 1.2 million participants.

Up until then, the founders of that group, which was created in the midst of the Arab Spring revolutions, said that they got the idea for that page from the Arab Spring uprisings which toppled Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.

M.N/M.H