How did we find out?: Team WebQoof searched for Palestine on Google Maps and found the tags for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
To see whether they had a specific tag earlier, we looked for news reports or posts which mentioned the same.
However, a piece by The Guardian from 2016 reported that Google never had a specific pin for Palestine.
Why does Google not label Palestine?: To understand why this was the case, The Quint reached out to Google over email, where a spokesperson responded with a clarification.
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They stated that Google Maps has how Palestine is represented on their platform.
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The company explained that due to the absence of a unified agreement among global authorities regarding the territorial boundaries of Palestine, they are unable to accurately outline and tag its borders on Google Maps.
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Nonetheless, when users look up Palestine on Maps, they would be guided to the area with the West Bank and Gaza Strip labels.
Conclusion: Social media users have falsely claimed that Palestine has been ‘removed’ from Google Maps.
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