14 DAY TRIAL // Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tzipi Hotovely, has met with Google's Director of Public Policy, Jennifer Oztzistzki, and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki to discuss the possibility of blocking YouTube videos of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The meeting took place at Google's Mountain View offices and was requested by the Israeli government, who wants to put a stop to "inflammatory" videos uploaded by regular Palestinians that do nothing but incite more violence or spur people to terrorism.
According to Mr. Hotovely's request, both the Israeli government and Google's and YouTube's staff will be working together to monitor and prevent any videos depicting any kind of violence from being uploaded to YouTube.
Israeli officials blame the escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict on intense social media promotion by the Palestinian side.
"The daily attacks in Israel are the result of youths and children incited by the education system and the social networks, this is a daily war of incitement," said Hotovely to IMEMC (International Middle East Media Center).
Is Israel looking to censor Palestine users on YouTube, or does it have a right to?
While officially-sanctioned journalists have to register with Israel's Military Censor's Office and have any footage they shoot approved before being released, regular users that upload smartphone-shot videos to YouTube circumvent this rule.
In an obvious military disadvantage, many Palestinians have taken to social media to reveal Israel's ruthless policy in the region, and YouTube has been their best friend.
Many view Israel's journalistic policy as a way to censor some of its army's abuses. On the other side, Israel has been the target of many smear campaigns by Arab users that were living in other countries (based on the Google+ profile linked to their YouTube account) but were trying to pass "abusive" videos as being carried out by Israel's military.
Either way, if Google decides to enter this agreement, it may want to allow another third-party to have a say into the "monitoring and prevention" system, so it cannot be accused of siding with Israel altogether.