Facebook has expanded its ad map to reach Israeli settlements located beyond the 1967 borders following a complaint by an Israeli official according to media reports.
The social networking site has amended its policy to include Jewish neighborhoods located outside the 1967 borders in ads targeting residents of Occupied Jerusalem according to Israel Hayom newspaper.
The newspaper said that Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely filed a complaint after learning that Facebook ads are limited only to Jerusalem neighborhoods within the 1967 borders.
The 1967 borders refer to the boundaries of the Palestinian state that existed before the war in which Israel occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem city the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Companies that advertised products or services to Israelis on Facebook were able to target only Israelis living inside the Green Line.
After learning of the issue from Israeli news site “Hottest Place in Hell” which allegedly encountered difficulties when trying to target locations in Israel on Facebook Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely reached out to Facebook to demand an explanation.
In a letter of complaint Hotovely wrote “It is unfathomable for Facebook to exclude neighborhoods in east Jerusalem from the map of Israel within the framework of its advertising tools. … According to the [location targeting] map Facebook presents neighborhoods like Gilo French Hill Pisgat Ze’ev and others do not even appear on the map of Israel.”
Facebook was quick to respond. In a letter to Hotovely Jordana Cutler a former adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now tasked with handling the tech giant’s relations with the Israeli government wrote that Facebook agreed that “a commercial business should not define the borders of any country” and announced the problematic map excluding the newer neighborhoods had been removed from the site.
Hotovely welcomed the move and thanked Facebook “for their swift response and professional handling of the issue.”
