As Israel continues its attacks on the Gaza Strip, Google has been accused of removing Palestine from Google Maps, but the reality is that it has never appeared in the famous location application, a tool used by millions of people.
Why isn’t Palestine showing up on Google Maps?
When searching for Palestine on Google Maps, the app displays an outline containing no label for Palestine and with Israel labeled next to it. While 136 members of the United Nations recognize Palestine as an independent state, the United States and much of the West still don’t, although in recent weeks that position has begun to change.
The representation of Palestine on Google Maps hasn’t changed recently; however, after the viral screenshot on Instagram condemning the action as something ‘supposedly’ against Palestine, the controversy exploded on social networks. A Google spokeswoman said: “There has never been a ‘Palestine’ label.”
Google Maps Controversy
In 2016, the hashtag #PalestineIsHere began trending after supporters of the Palestinian cause condemned Google for allegedly removing the word “Palestine” from Google Maps.
#PalestineIsHere: Online outrage after Google ‘erases’ Palestine off the map https://t.co/1JIpCriXxA pic.twitter.com/nzDXNSypdp
— NationalTreasure.AE (@Treasure_Nation) August 9, 2016
But Google didn’t do that, because the tag was never there. Now, that decision returns to the center of the debate in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When searching for “Palestine” on Google Maps, the map zooms in on the region of Israel and Palestine, and both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank territories are labeled and separated by dotted lines.
Despite this, as we have already pointed out, there has been no label for Palestine for years. This isn’t a deliberate action as we might easily think.
