THE Israeli military began blocking Palestinian agricultural exports today, escalating a months-long trade war.

Acting on orders from Defence Minister Naftali Bennett, the military said it would not allow the Palestinians to ship their products through their land crossing to Jordan – the West Bank’s only direct export route to the outside world.

The Palestinian Authority said Israeli forces at checkpoints had blocked consignments of vegetables intended for sale abroad.

In a statement, the Ministry of Agriculture said it had shipped vegetables worth $88 million (£68.2m) to Israel last year — 68 per cent of the West Bank’s overall vegetable exports.

The crisis erupted in September, after the Palestinians decided to stop importing beef from Israel.

The Palestinian Authority explained that most of the 120,000 head of cattle a month that it brought from Israel were imported, so it preferred to import directly from abroad.

Shortly after that announcement, Israeli cattle farmers experienced a drop in sales and demanded government action.

Mr Bennett responded by banning Palestinian beef and other products, leading the Palestinians to boycott Israeli vegetables, fruits, beverages and mineral water.

The Palestinians say their actions are aimed at getting Israel to revoke its ban, while Israel is demanding that the Palestinians restart imports of “Israeli” cattle.

The trade crisis comes amid angry Palestinian protests against US President Donald Trump’s so-called peace deal.

Facebook removed the alternative page of the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC) on Saturday, having already deleted the official page in October and two back-up pages in December as part of an escalating campaign against Palestinian content on social media.

PIC, the most widely read online Palestinian news source, said there had been no advance notice of the deletion or any complaint about the page’s contents.

It called on Facebook to reverse the decision and said it was taking action to restore the page.