Sitting in an armchair with her feet tugged up under her and a laptop in front of her, blogger Malaka Mohammed typed 140 characters and clicked "tweet." She scrolled through the most recent tweets, then went to her blog where she reviewed a post she is working on before moving on to her Facebook page, checking recent comments from her more than 5,000 followers. The 22-year-old recent English literature graduate is one of Gaza’s most prominent online activists.
"I started with Facebook, because there is no house here without Facebook. Then, a teacher told me I should start a blog because I’m a good writer. I now have thousands of readers,” Mohammed told Al-Monitor at her home in Al-Shejaia in Gaza. "Whenever I write, reply or share I always think of the result and effect. The Palestinian issue is important. When you write something as a Palestinian, the entire world will think of you as representing Palestinian women.”
And the influence of her writing is not to be overlooked. She single-handedly convinced the Islamic University of Gaza to boycott Israeli goods. And after she decided to put world attention to the case of former hunger striking Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi earlier this year, her online campaign "#freeSamerIssawi" trended on Twitter for days and reached international news outlets such as CNN and BBC.
Heba Zayyan, Head of UN Women in Gaza, sees Palestinian women in the besieged territory as very active when it comes to voicing their opinions online.
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