Google’s Palestinian Home Page Recognizes ‘Palestine’
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Version 0 of 1. Five months after the United Nations General Assembly voted to upgrade Palestine’s status to a nonmember observer state, Google has followed suit, labeling its local home page “Palestine” instead of the “Palestinian territories.” The Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority began using “State of Palestine” on official documents immediately after the Nov. 29 United Nations vote, and urged international organizations to do the same. A Google spokesman said Friday that the company was making the change “across all our products.” Sabri Saadat, a spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, called the move a step in the right direction, but Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, voiced displeasure. “It has no diplomatic or political significance,” Mr. Palmor told an Israeli news Web site on Friday. “Precisely because Google is not the U.N. or any international diplomatic institution, this begs the question of whether there is room for any political stance on controversial issues.” |