Journalists called Wednesday for a Palestinian court decision to close 59 websites and social media pages to be overturned, with activists saying it appeared to be aimed at silencing critics.

A Palestinian Authority (PA) court in the occupied West Bank on Monday ordered the sites, most of them Palestinian, blocked on the grounds they were threats to “national security and peace.”

International press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the order included news sites with millions of Facebook followers, such as the Quds Network.

A lawyer for the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Alaa Freijat, told AFP the court decision that came at the request of the attorney general had been appealed.

A suit had been filed challenging the constitutionality of a law allowing authorities to take such action if sites are viewed as threats to public order, national unity and social peace.

Mohammed al-Laham of the journalists’ union said that neither the PA’s information ministry nor the syndicate had been consulted in advance.

Dozens of journalists took part in a demonstration Wednesday, chanting, “Hands off of freedom of the press,” he said.

A PA spokesman, Ibrahim Melhem, backed the journalists, calling on “the relevant authorities and the attorney general to overturn the decision.”

Websites have been blocked via internet providers, said Ahmed Youssef, a journalist for one of the sites suspended, “Ultra Palestine.”

Sabrina Bennoui of RSF said in a statement that “blocking websites is clearly a violation of the right to news and information.”

“In so doing, the Palestinian Authority confirms its refusal to accept media pluralism and its desire to eliminate all opposition by making it invisible to the public.”
 

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