In 1997, The Kyl-Bingaman Amendment (KBA) was written as an addition to the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act to limit high-resolution satellite imagery of Israel and Palestine from being disseminated commercially through the American satellite imagery market. This market, which controlled the majority of global satellite imagery, through Google and others, had dominated the high-resolution data of the region until 2012. Since 2012, global companies began to cover the same region with similar quality imagery leaving KBA an outdated amendment that was still reinforced in pixelating parts of Occupied Palestine. This attempt to control satellite footage by the Israeli government through their lobbying attempts was successful in the United States and was also enforced on Palestinian satellite imagery itself. Until recently, Geomolg, run by Palestine’s Ministry of Local Government, an online platform for spatial information in Palestine, had been dramatically censored by the Israeli government. The censorship left settlements, Israeli prisons, and West Jerusalem entirely pixelated. I reached out in 2016 to Geomolg for comment:
Dima Srouji:
Dear Mr. Jamal,
It has come to my attention that Geomolg has pixels censoring settlements, military points, and Israeli prisons such Ofer etc. However, this is not the case for Google Maps where all of this data is accessible in their satellite imagery since the changes of the Kyl-Bingaman amendment this year.
I'm curious to know whether the Israeli government did not give permission for Geomolg to photograph these sites from an aerial perspective or whether this is an internal decision made by the local government.
Thank you so much and warm regards,
Dima Srouji
Mr. Jamal:
Hi Fatin,
Please, follow up on this
Best
Jamal
Fatin:
Sorry for this delay in responding.
If I understand your point well, I would like to say that some locations in the 2016 orthophoto are vague or not clear on the map.
You are right, this happened due to permission issues from the Israeli government and we are not allowed to capture or take areal photos for these sites.
Don't hesitate to contact me if you need any further help.
All the Best,
Fatin
