New America Media, News Analysis, Jalal Ghazi, Posted: Apr 07, 2011

A few weeks ago Al-Ahram, one of the most popular Egyptian newspapers, reported that an Egyptian man named his daughter Facebook to show his gratitude toward the social networking site. And a couple of weeks ago, millions of Egyptians and Arabs seemed very appreciative of the role of Facebook in making grassroots demonstrations successful.

However, Arab confidence in Facebook has suffered a significant setback after the site shut down “The Third Palestinian Intifada” page—which had amassed 350,000 supporters—evidently under strong pressure from Israel. After first rejecting requests to remove the page, Facebook did an about-face and deleted it when told that some postings incited violence against Israel, a charge the page’s developers deny.

As a result of the abrupt deletion, others throughout the Arab world have launched their own “Third Palestinian Intifada” pages, copied from the original and adding new content.

A simple search on Facebook using the words “Third Palestinian Intifada” in English or Arabic leads to an endless list of copycat pages all over the globe. At least one includes a video clip calling for the use of suicide bombing against Israeli citizens. It is not clear whether this clip was included in the original page.

What is clear, though, is that the founder of the first "Third Palestinian Intifada” launched the page to call for peaceful demonstrations around the world after Friday prayers on May 15, 2011.

Building on the momentum of the Arab Spring that started in Tunisia and Egypt, the Intifada organizers, who are working anonymously, say they intended to rally Arabs in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria to march to specific areas along the Israeli border to conduct their Friday prayers. Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza are being called to do the same near Israeli checkpoints there.

May 15, 1948, is the date Israel celebrates as its official independence day—but it is also the date Palestinians mark as the Naqba, or catastrophe, when more than 750,000 of them were dispossessed of their homes and land.

Facebook’s About-Face

Initially, Facebook refused to shut down the page. The company released a statement saying, “While some kinds of comments and content may be upsetting for someone— criticism of a certain culture, country, religion, lifestyle or political ideology, for example—that alone is not a reason to remove the discussion.”

The statement added, “We strongly believe that Facebook users have the ability to express their opinions, and we don’t typically take down content, groups or pages that speak out against countries, religions, political entities or ideas.”

Then, Facebook made a U-turn by removing the “Third Palestinian Intifada” page, accusing the page’s developers and monitors of participating in calls for violence.

A Facebook spokesperson told the Jerusalem Post, “The page, entitled ‘The Third Palestinian Intifada,’ began as a call for peaceful protest, even though it used a term that has been associated with violence in the past,” that is, the term Intifada.

The company representative added, “In addition, the administrators initially removed comments that promoted violence. However, after the publicity of the page, more comments deteriorated to direct calls for violence. Eventually, the page’s creators also participated in these calls. After administrators of the page received repeated warnings about posts that violated our policies, we removed the page.”

Although Facebook’s reversal pleased the Israeli government, it outraged Arab web activists and made them even more defiant. According to Al Jazeera, hours after the original “Third Palestinian Intifada” was closed, web activists, led by Tunisians, Egyptians and Algerians, rushed to establish copycat pages, and thousands of Arabs quickly sign up for them.

One page, titled “Together in Support of the Palestinian Intifada,” declared, “We will not accept the closure of the ‘Third Palestinian Intifada’ page” and called for boycotting Facebook.

A posting on another page stated, “Do you remember the millions that went to the streets in Egypt … God welling they will come back on May 15 to show their solidarity to the Palestinian people.”

A third copycat page declared, “Do not bother Facebook, we will have an Intifada on May 15th despite you and Israel.”

Al Jazeera quoted a founder of the original “Third Palestinian Intifada” page as saying that Facebook also closed a copycat, after it had generated more than 63,000 supporters in a few days. He added, “I will not be weakened, I will continue to establish a new account and a new ‘Third Palestinian Intifada’ page.”

A Hard Economic Decision

Closing popular pages is not an easy decision for Facebook from a business perspective. Its business model is based on increasing the number of users by giving a voice to the masses.

But it has increasingly faced pressure to close down pages that might be viewed as anti-Israel, thus risking the possibility of losing the trust of millions of Arabs and Muslims.

Facebook previously closed another page that some considered anti-Israel. In June 2010, Facebook shut down the page of the largest Egyptian group campaigning against the controversial “Iron Wall” being constructed between Gaza and Egypt.

Before Facebook eliminated the “Third Palestinian Intifada” page, Israel’s Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein contacted the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, to explain the Israeli view.

In a March letter to Zuckerberg, Edelstein said, “During these past few days a Facebook page entitled ‘Third Palestinian Intifada’ has been garnering attention on the web by calling for a third intifada against the State of Israel to begin on May 15th, 2011. On this Facebook page there are posted many remarks and movie clips which call for the killing of Israelis and Jews and the ‘liberating’ of Jerusalem and of Palestine through acts of violence.”

A Question of Semantics?

However, the founders of the “Third Palestinian Intifada” page deny these accusations. Part of the problem is a misunderstanding, because terminology used on the website means different things to Israelis and Arabs. From the Israeli perspective, for example, the terms “Third Intifada” and “Tahrir Falestine,” which translates to “liberation of Palestine,” sound like incitements to violence.

During the First Intifada (1987-1993), Palestinians protest Israeli policies mainly through nonviolent methods, such as general strikes, or unarmed reactions (such as throwing stones). But during the Second Intifada, starting in 2000, protesters used suicide bombing and other violent tactics. So although the word intifada, which translates to uprising, does not necessarily mean armed uprising, the Israeli government perceives it as such.

Similarly, the Israeli government understood the term “liberation” as incitement to use armed operations to liberate historical Palestine and replace Israel with an Arab state. In Arabic, however, the term is not necessarily used to mean armed operations.

The question is, did Facebook consider the Israeli government’s view as adequate for justifying the closure of a page with up to 350,000 supporters?

The founders of the original “Third Palestinian Intifada” page seem to think so. Meanwhile, they are calling on copycat page creators to go around Facebook to a particular web page for instructions on how to carry out The Third Intifada. In the Arab world, at least, Facebook has lost face.

Jalal Ghazi was a producer of the Peabody Award–winning program, Mosaic: World News from the Middle East for Link TV (2002-2010) and has written the “Eye on Arab Media” column for New America Media since 2001. His email is ghazisf@gmail.com.