Mapquest sidesteps requests to correct blatantly innacurate Map of Israel!

international | miscellaneous | other press Thursday October 27, 2005 00:53 by Jon Glackin

Request for assistance in addressing the innacuracy of Israeli Maps...

MAPQUEST SIDESTEPS REQUESTS TO CORRECT
BLATANTLY INACCURATE MAP OF ISRAEL
Ira Glunts, The Electronic Intifada, 25 October 2005

THE PROBLEM

Changing the map of the Middle East is difficult even in a
literal sense. Last month the Electronic Intifada informed
its readers of the blatantly inaccurate map of Israel
which currently appears on MapQuest.com. See "MapQuest.com
Obscures Status Of Occupied Territories," 23 September
2005, http://electronicIntifada.net/v2/article4194.shtml

Among other errors, this map omits the borders which
distinguish the occupied territories from the State of
Israel. By leaving out these borders, MapQuest has made a
virtual Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza,
territories which hopefully will one day become an
independent Palestinian state. The map of Israel on
MapQuest presents the distorted political vision
championed by the Israeli right wing and is anathema to
all who support a just political solution to the conflict.

As a result of our call to action, MapQuest received
hundreds of e-mail messages (many of which were cc-ed or
forwarded to EI) requesting that they update their maps.
MapQuest initially sent out a boiler plate reply thanking
one and all for their input and promising to look into the
matter in due course. After hundreds of responses
containing the same pre-formatted e-mail EI finally
obtained a response, forwarded by a reader, which included
information about the map vendor that supplies MapQuest
with its incorrect maps of Israel and the Occupied
Territories. We were given the address of AND, a company
in Holland, and informed that any issues concerning the
map of Israel should be directed there.

Since the owners of any website are ultimately responsible
for misleading content they offer to visitors, they should
be willing to take proactive measures if the content on
their site is inaccurate, insensitive or offensive. Thus,
we find the redirecting of our corrections by MapQuest to
its map vendor inappropriate and inadequate. However, on
October 5, in the hope of a quick resolution to this
issue, we wrote Dutch map vendor AND, explaining the
problem with the Israel map and requesting that the
borders of the occupied territories appear on all their
maps.

The last statement we received from AND, on October 12th,
said,

"I would like to inform you that I've forwarded
your inquiry to the production department for
investigation with a copy to the main office.
I've requested that one of my colleagues ...
contact you with the authority to make a
statement regarding the status of the
inquiry..."

We are still waiting for the statement.


THE SOLUTION

To challenge this insufficient response, please e-mail Tom
Pouwelse at AND's International Support Desk,
[email protected], or write via postal mail to Tom Pouwelse,
AND Head Office, Scheepmakersstraat 13, 3011 VH Rotterdam,
The Netherlands. Reference our case number: 249069-10136.
Also, please send a copy to MapQuest at [email protected]
or via postal mail to MapQuest, Inc., 1730 Blake Street,
Denver, Colorado 80202:

* asking the company to review the maps it offers for
Israel and the occupied territories;

* noting that MapQuest.com does not differentiate between
territories within the Israeli state and the West Bank,
Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights, which are territories
occupied by Israel;

* noting that MapQuest.com continues to show an
international border that separates Egypt from the rest of
the Sinai Peninsula, when this formerly Israeli-occupied
area was officially handed back to Egypt in 1979 and from
which Israel fully withdrew in 1982;

* noting that an alternative MapQuest view of Israel
depicts the borders correctly, as in this example from the
standard geopolitical reference text, the CIA World
Factbook:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/is.html

* asking MapQuest to clarify whether and how its
depictions of these territories will be updated to reflect
their correct international status.

Please compose letters politely and BCC or forward a copy
to [email protected]. Please forward any
response you receive from AND or MapQuest to EI.