How does Google Maps make it difficult for Palestinians to navigate the West Bank?

Bhutto, who regularly travels to the West Bank city of Ramallah from her home in Haifa, Israel, for work and to visit friends, says Google Maps has led her astray several times in recent years. “I was asked to drive my car straight into a wall that has been in place since 2003,” she says.

Others have encountered the same wall near the Qalandiya checkpoint that separates Jerusalem from the West Bank, and entering it has become almost a rite of passage. “I was once trying to reach an office located in an East Jerusalem neighborhood, and Google Maps completely failed,” says Laila, who works remotely for an American company from Ramallah and asked that only her first name be used for privacy reasons. . “He wanted me to walk down a path completely cut off by the wall.”

Google’s Bordeaux told WIRED that the company is investigating the trail and will make an update if it can verify the situation against reliable data.

Even before the war, Google Maps users in the West Bank say they were accustomed to receiving potentially unsafe directions. One ongoing issue they point to is the fact that Google does not distinguish between unblocked roads and those that only Israelis are allowed to use, such as those leading to and from Israeli settlements where Palestinians are not supposed to go. On the way from Haifa to Ramallah, Google Maps once directed Bhutto to a closed gate where she said Israeli soldiers approached her car with their weapons pointed at her. “I had to explain that I made a mistake,” she says. Google “is working to improve traffic on settlement roads, which, for me as a Palestinian, can be very dangerous.”

Bordo says that Google does not differentiate between Palestinian and Israeli roads, because this requires knowing personal information about users, such as their nationality.

When Google Maps leads her to settlements, Bhutto says she speaks in English, hoping to pass as a lost foreigner. Other Palestinian users tell WIRED that when they unexpectedly end up in risky areas, they try to return or retreat as quickly as possible.

In other cases, Google Maps refuses to provide directions altogether, such as when navigating between West Bank cities, including Hebron and Ramallah. Instead, the app tells them it “can’t calculate driving directions” (WIRED was able to replicate the same result). One current Google employee says that’s because Google hasn’t invested in enabling directions between the three administrative regions in the West Bank, two of which are officially under the control of Israeli authorities. Bordeaux, a Google spokesman, said the company is working to address this problem.

New challenges

Despite its drawbacks, users tell WIRED they still previously found Google Maps useful in the area, especially when they traveled to unfamiliar places. But since the war started, they feel that the application has become unbearable. Shortly after the fighting began, Google turned off the ability to see an overview of live traffic in the area For protection “Community safety.” Users now have to enter a specific location to see traffic conditions along their route, which could add a potential extra step for some.

Two current Google employees also say that due to changing conditions on the ground during the war and the increase in spam that tends to follow conflicts, Google did not act on several suggested modifications submitted by employees and drivers in the West Bank, which alert the tech giant to problems such as street or… Lost places. This has resulted in the road data on the app becoming outdated over the past year. Bordeaux says Google applies updates when suggestions can be verified by trusted sources.