More than 180,000 people have signed a petition online demanding Google to label Palestine on its Google Maps application after some alleged that it was removed in recent days. The petition on Change.org, first posted five months ago, suggests that Google did not remove the label Palestine from the map but that it has marked the territory as Israel ever since.
The story resurfaced after international media outlets ran articles alleging the decision was only made recently. In an emailed statement to Al Arabiya English, a Google spokesperson said it never really included Palestine on its maps.
Users who in the past searched for Palestine on Google Maps would be zoomed into the correct geographical location with the country marked as Israel with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank territories labeled in red dotted lines. A glitch in recent days, however, has those red lines removed.
The Palestinian Journalists’ Forum said that Google removed the decision on July 25 and denounced the stance saying Google “is part of the Israeli scheme to establish its name as a legitimate state for generations to come and abolish Palestine once and for all.”
Google has officially recognized Palestine in the past when it changed the term “Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine” across all its products in May 2013.
