How Google Maps makes it difficult for Palestinians to move in the West Bank

Buttu, who regularly travels from his home in Haifa, Israel to the West Bank city of Ramallah for work and to visit friends, says Google Maps has led him astray many times in recent years. “I’ve been told to drive up the wall since 2003,” he said.

Others encountered the same wall near the Galandiya crossing that separates Jerusalem from the West Bank, and the drive there almost became a rite of passage. “I was once trying to get to an office in a neighborhood in East Jerusalem and Google Maps failed me completely,” says Leyla, who works remotely from Ramallah for a US company and asked to use only her first name for privacy reasons. “He wanted me to go down the road that was completely cut off by the wall.”

Google’s Bourdeau told WIRED that the company is investigating the route and will update if it can verify the situation with reliable data.

Even before the war, Google Maps users in the West Bank say they were used to taking potentially dangerous directions. A persistent issue they highlight is that Google doesn’t distinguish between unrestricted roads that are only allowed to be used by Israelis, such as those leading to and from Israeli settlements that Palestinians are not allowed to travel. On the route from Haifa to Ramallah, Google Maps once directed Buttu to a closed gate, where he said Israeli soldiers approached his car with their weapons pointed at him. “I had to explain that I was wrong,” he says. Google is “optimizing for me as a Palestinian to go to the settlement roads which can be very dangerous”.

Bourdeau says Google doesn’t distinguish between Palestinian and Israeli routes because it requires personal information about users, such as their citizenship.

When Google Maps led him to residential areas, Bhuttu says he spoke English, hoping to pass as a lost foreigner. Other Palestinian users tell WIRED that when they unexpectedly find themselves in risky areas, they try to turn back or retreat as quickly as possible.

In other cases, Google Maps refuses to provide directions at all when navigating between cities in the West Bank, including Hebron and Ramallah. Instead, the app tells them they “couldn’t calculate driving directions.” (WIRED was able to replicate the same result.) One current Google employee says it’s because Google hasn’t invested in enabling directions between the three administrative territories of the West Bank, two of which are officially controlled by Israeli authorities. Bourdeau, a Google spokeswoman, said the company is working to fix the problem.

New Challenges

Despite its shortcomings, users tell WIRED that they’ve still found Google Maps to be useful in the past, especially when traveling to unfamiliar locations. Since the start of the war, they feel that enforcement has become intolerable. Shortly after the battle began, Google shut down the ability to see an overview of live traffic in the region protect “Safety of local communities.” Users must now enter a specific location to see traffic conditions along their route, potentially adding an extra step for some of them.

Two current Google employees also say that because of the changing conditions on the ground during the war and the increase in spam that followed the conflicts, Google did not follow through on many of the suggested edits sent by employees and drivers on the West Coast. technology giant to problems like missing streets or places. This has caused the traffic data in the app to become outdated over the past year. Bourdeau says Google applies updates when suggestions are verified through trusted sources.