CAIRO: A post going viral among Arab social media users Thursday accused Google of removing Palestine from all online maps.
The users shared screenshots of Google Maps that show an outline of the map with the labels for “West Bank” and “Gaza Strip” as well as “Israel” labeled alongside them.
The viral post claimed the label for Palestine has been removed and people shared posts saying they were angered that there was “No Palestine” on both Apple and Google maps.
However, in 2016, when users claimed the same thing, Google responded saying the name Palestine has never existed on its maps.
A Google spokeswoman said at the time: “There has never been a ‘Palestine’ label on Google Maps.”
A spokeswoman said there was a bug that removed the label for “West Bank and “Gaza.”
“We’re working quickly to bring these labels back to the area,” she said.
The move comes while Israel President Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.
The threat has triggered global criticism with many countries calling it ‘human rights violation’.
Palestine was never labelled by google.
This is the reason why researching by yourself is so important. pic.twitter.com/HwSR2lracK— Bizzlerella (@emyq24) July 16, 2020
