A Gaza City journalism group spotted a change in the way Google represented Palestine on a map of Israel, causing outrage on both mainstream and social media in the Middle East.
The search engine giant explained why Palestine has never been on the service.
Responding to criticism, Google said that Palestine had never been marked as a territory on its map, but that a glitch in the software had resulted in Palestinian areas being removed. “There has never been a ‘Palestine’ label on Google Maps,” said a spokesperson for Google. “However, we discovered a bug that removed the labels for ‘West Bank’ and ‘Gaza Strip’. We’re working quickly to get these labels back to the area.”
READ MORE: Outrage on social media after Google ‘erases’ Palestine off world map
The row came after Gaza City journalism group spotted a change in the way Google represented Palestine on a map of Israel, terming it a “failed attempt” aimed at “falsifying history and geography.”
Google removes Palestine from its world Map .. Wow pic.twitter.com/HsQL4nOozp
— AlQubaty (@FakhuusHashim) 8 August 2016
An online petition titled “Google: Put Palestine on your maps” was also put up on Change.org and attracted over 312,000 signatures as of Friday, accusing Google Maps of “making itself complicit in the Israeli government’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine” either on purpose or inadvertently. The petition, drafted by Zak Martin, slammed the omission of the UN non-member observer state’s name on the map as a “grievous insult” to Palestinians.
Google shows a dashed border around West Bank and Gaza, and defines cities in those regions as Palestinian if you click on them. A Wikipedia knowledge box on Maps describes Palestine as a “de jure sovereign state,” a term selected by the United Nations in 2013.
Courtesy: Engadget