Palestinian App Helps Drivers Avoid Israeli Checkpoints

Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank. (Photo: via Ma'an)

A new locally-developed app helps Palestinian drivers in the occupied West Bank negotiate traffic at Israeli military checkpoints and uncover routes to towns mainstream providers often miss.

Launched in June and designed by Palestinians, Doroob Navigator crowd-sources road closures and traffic data from users. It aims to supplant apps like Google Maps and Waze, which rarely account for Israeli restrictions and struggle to navigate between Palestinian cities.

Israel illegally captured the West Bank in 1967. It has since place hundreds of checkpoints around the Palestinian area, some permanent others which appear overnight and which remain in situ for hours or days at a time. But the roadblocks limit Palestinian mobility and damage their economy, according to the World Bank.

In a July 2018 survey, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHAoPt) recorded that there are “705 permanent obstacles across the West Bank restricting or controlling Palestinian vehicular, and in some cases pedestrian, movement.”

(Middle East Monitor, PC, Social Media)

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