Earlier this month, Palestinian police beat several journalists as they covered a non-violent protest in Ramallah, according to news reports. This incident is just the latest in a series of cases over the past six months where Palestinian journalists have experienced a significant crackdown on attempts to criticize Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority. The judiciary is reinterpreting laws dating back to the 1960s that criminalized defamation of officials as the basis for arrests, intimidation of journalists and blocking web sites.

Summonses, threatening phone calls, continuous interrogations, arrests and even detention for weeks on end are some of the methods the Palestinian Authority is increasingly using against journalists, bloggers and social media activists who publicly speak out against Abbas, his government, and security and police forces in the West Bank, according to media rights watchdogs. The organizations are noticing increased scrutiny of social media sites like Facebook and interrogation of people whose statements are deemed too provocative.

“Many journalists won’t write about certain cases because they think it is forbidden or they think they will be attacked,” said Moussa Rimawi, director of the Palestinian Center for Development & Media Freedoms (MADA), which is based in Ramallah. He worries that the crackdown will result in the rise of self-censorship.

In 2011, MADA saw more violations by Palestinian than Israeli authorities for the first time since the center’s launch in 2008. These were mainly physical assaults and interrogations, but also included arrests, detentions and prevention from covering certain events—a trend, which seems to have continued into 2012.