Cartographic digital colonialism across Lebanon and Palestine

Apple and Google Maps have become the primary cartographic imagination of the world. Two billion people navigate through them, trust them, defer to them. When Apple Maps displays no village names across Lebanon, not only in the south facing Israeli invasion but nationwide, while nearby Israeli and Syrian localities remain clearly labelled, only a handful of larger cities remain: Beirut, Tyre, Sidon and a small number of others. Everywhere else, the map went completely blank. Which raises the question: is this the next phase of the ground invasion, even amidst a ceasefire? Who made that choice of rendering the Lebanese villages invisible, when, and on what basis? On Google Maps, Israeli settlements in the West Bank appear as though located […]