Buttu, who regularly travels to the city of Ramallah in the West Bank from her home in Haifa, Israel for work and to visit friends, says Google Maps has led her astray many times in recent years. “I’ve been told to drive right into a wall that’s been up since 2003,” she says.
Others have encountered the same wall near the Qalandia checkpoint separating Jerusalem from the West Bank, and almost driving into it has become something of a rite of passage. “I was once trying to get to an office that was in a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and Google Maps absolutely failed me,” says Leila, who works for a US company remotely from Ramallah and asked to use only her first name for privacy reasons. “It wanted me to go on a road that was completely cut off by the wall.”
Google’s Bourdeau tells WIRED that the company is investigating the route and will make an update if it can…
