Facebook says occupied territories are Israel

Or Palestine...

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in Applications, 18th March 2008 11:47 GMT

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A week ago Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg told us how his website is bringing peace to the Middle East by giving young people in Lebanon a wider view of the world.

But now it's caught up in a row with Israeli settlers on the West Bank. Jewish settlers reacted angrily when the auto-complete function on Facebook finished their addresses on the West Bank as being in "Palestine".

Facebook now offers the "Israel" option for major settlements, even though the West Bank is not in Israel - however, some settlements are still auto-completing with Palestine.

Another group - admittedly, one with only 43 members so far - has formed on the social networking site to demand that Facebook remove any reference to Palestine because it is not a country.

There are networks for both Israel and Palestine on Facebook with 400,220 and 34,419 members respectively.

There is also a network for Taiwan, but no entry for Tibet.

The West Bank is occupied by Israel and its future status depends on negotiations. ®

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