Google admitted to online technology magazine 'Engadget' this week that it had accidentally omitted the labels ‘West Bank’ and ‘Gaza Strip’ from its map service.
“We discovered a bug that removed the labels for 'West Bank' and 'Gaza Strip'," a spokesperson said.
"We're working quickly to bring these labels back to the area."
While it has since restored 'Gaza', the area of West Bank is marked only by a red line.
But the apparent glitch led a Gaza-based journalism group to believe that Google had in fact erased the territory of Palestine from Google Maps, which prompted an outcry on social media under the hashtag #Palestineishere.
“The Forum of Palestinian Journalists condemns the crime carried out by Google in deleting the name of Palestine, and calls for Google to rescind its decision and apologize to the Palestinian people,” the organisation stated on its website.
However, Google told 'The Telegraph' that it had never marked Palestine as a territory, which the United Nations termed as a “de jure sovereign state” in 2013.
Google's failure to acknowledge Palestine's sovereignty in line with the UN has prompted hundreds of thousands of people to sign a Change.org petition, which began five months ago to call for Google to recognise Palestine on Google Maps.
“The omission of Palestine is a grievous insult to the people of Palestine and undermines the efforts of the millions of people who are involved in the campaign to secure Palestinian independence and freedom from Israeli occupation and oppression,” the petition reads.
