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Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

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11–20 of 693 posts

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#11
post #7
post #4

tldr: Israeli-US agreement limited resolution until July 2020, and Gmaps hasn't gotten around to updating the imagery since.

The bigger question of course is why the "agreement" was made with the Israelis, and not with the Palestinians directly.

USA is the only country on earth that recognises all of Israel’s territory claims.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#12
post #7
post #4

tldr: Israeli-US agreement limited resolution until July 2020, and Gmaps hasn't gotten around to updating the imagery since.

The bigger question of course is why the "agreement" was made with the Israelis, and not with the Palestinians directly.

Because there's never been a country named "Palestine" and as such it's hard to make agreements with a country that doesn't exist.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#13
post #5

Is it possible to have real-time live-feed of the entire planet? If cost isn't an issue, would something like that be possible?

https://zoom.earth/

not quite real time (I'm not sure if that's even possible) but this is quite up to date. I used to to check out the smoke from last year.

edit: you get pictures every 10 minutes of the whole globe, but the resolution is pretty bad, good enough to check the cloud coverage though

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#14
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://planet.com (planet customer, no other affiliation)

I think OP was asking more for a live-stream type service, where this appears to be static imagery.

This is the best that's currently available.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#15
post #7
post #4

tldr: Israeli-US agreement limited resolution until July 2020, and Gmaps hasn't gotten around to updating the imagery since.

The bigger question of course is why the "agreement" was made with the Israelis, and not with the Palestinians directly.

possibly because the israelis already have all the imagery they would want anyway, and the blurring is only a problem for people who don't?

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#16
post #5

Is it possible to have real-time live-feed of the entire planet? If cost isn't an issue, would something like that be possible?

Maybe Starlink satellites should also feature a camera? They've already got the connectivity. You'd need a large constellation and this one seems like it will become huge.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#17
post #7
post #4

tldr: Israeli-US agreement limited resolution until July 2020, and Gmaps hasn't gotten around to updating the imagery since.

The bigger question of course is why the "agreement" was made with the Israelis, and not with the Palestinians directly.

As far as Gaza goes, Hamas rules Gaza but they're not the recognized government.

I'm not sure who you would ask to make policy in such a situation.

Just Hamas because they rule that area by force? That sounds a lot like asking Israel for the same reason.

I don't think there's a good/ automatic answer for these situations.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger question of course is why the "agreement" was made with the Israelis, and not with the Palestinians directly.

Because there's never been a country named "Palestine" and as such it's hard to make agreements with a country that doesn't exist.

... in the US Government's (and some of its allies') perspective (NB: there are definitely some caveats and the most "Israel-only" policy is in the Trump era but in practice this is how it works). Most Arab countries (for some, until recently) have the inverse: they only recognize the Palestinian government and never the Israeli government. Some governments choose a more pragmatic "both Israel and Palestine exists but their land borders are definitely not defined well".

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#19
post #5

Is it possible to have real-time live-feed of the entire planet? If cost isn't an issue, would something like that be possible?

https://zoom.earth/ not quite real time (I'm not sure if that's even possible) but this is quite up to date. I used to to check out the smoke from last year. edit: you get pictures every 10 minutes of the whole globe, but the resolution is pretty bad, good enough to check the cloud coverage though

There is also https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/ which seems to be a bit higher resolution, I think they are imagin the whole earth every other day.
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