Google Maps has never used the label "Palestine" in its web application, which caused outrage among Palestinians across social media. In addition, "West Bank" and "Gaza Strip" labels has also been removed recently. However, Google claims that they were not deleted intentionally.
Google said that it follows the policy of the United States and 49 other countries and has never put a country named "Palestine" on its list. It is also important to note that even the United Nations does not recognize Palestine as an independent state. Google Maps currently shows Gaza as a label, but if a user searches for "Palestine," "Gaza Strip" and "West Bank," the map shows an area contained within a dotted line that has no label.
A Google spokesperson discussed that Google Maps has never listed a "Palestine" label, Engadget reported. However, the company found that a bug has caused the removal of the labels for "West Bank" and "Gaza Strip." Furthermore, Google and its team are working to restore the labels back to the area as soon as possible.
However, Google is called to revoke its decision in removing the name of "Palestine" from Google Map and apologize to the Palestinian people according to the Palestinian media forum. The act is considered a crime committed by the global search engine on July 25 when it deleted Palestine from its map, according to report.
Palestinians and other supporters of Palestine on social media condemned the move of Google Map and started an online petition using the hashtag #PalestineIsHere. More than 250,000 people have signed the online petition through Change.org so far. The campaign was actually started five months ago, long before Google allegedly removed "Palestine" but it has just received the majority of signatures in the past few days.
Google Maps has previously labeled Palestinian territories as "Palestine" in May 2013. However, the move was condemned by Israeli officials. This is because the final status of Palestinian territories and their borders are yet to be settled through Palestinian Authority and Israel negotiations. Watch video about GOOGLE MAP Deleting PALESTINE here: