Palestine-Israel conflict، Why does Gaza look blurry on Google Maps?

Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, why does it appear blurred on the Google Maps website?

 This is a problem that is being pointed out by many people who are trying to find out in the light of publicly available sources and information how much destruction is taking place in Gaza.

 "The fact is that we do not have access to high-resolution images of the Israeli and Palestinian territories, which severely affects our work," said a researcher on publicly available sources.

 It is true that space photographers have high-resolution images of Israel and the Palestinian territories, but the images that are posted on Google Earth are inferior (low-resolution). ) Are.

In the pictures of Gaza seen on Google Earth, you can hardly see cars moving on the road.

 If you compare it with Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, which is kept out of sight of the world, then on Google Earth we not only see cars very clearly, but you can see the different people on the road separately. can see. Details of the ongoing fighting in the Middle East are being explored by images from space planets to determine where missiles are being fired from Israel and Gaza and which buildings are being targeted.

 But the problem is that the resolution of the latest space images of Gaza available on Google Earth is low and everything looks blurry.Google claims to be constantly updating images of the world's "densely populated areas", but to our knowledge this is not the case in Gaza.Until last year, the US government had banned the quality of images of Israel and the Palestinian territories, and US companies were allowed to buy such images for a fee.

 The ban was added to U.S. law in 1997 when an amendment to Israel's defense needs was made called the Kyle Benjamin Amendment.Under an amendment called the KBA, US space companies were only allowed to release low-resolution images, ie images with a pixel size of no more than 2 meters.

 In such images, installations such as military bases always appear to be washed away, but this is the only amendment to a country's laws that has been applied to an entire country.

 Although the US law only mentions Israel, it also applies to the Palestinian territories.

 However, later, when French aircraft maker Airbus released clear high-resolution images of the region, pressure mounted on the United States to lift its ban on images of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

 As a result, the United States finally repealed the KBA amendment in 2020, and now the US government has allowed its private companies to release high-resolution images of the region.

 Archaeologists from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who have been campaigning against the amendment, say the first reason for the amendment was scientific.