tldr: Israeli-US agreement limited resolution until July 2020, and Gmaps hasn't gotten around to updating the imagery since.
US interests also benefit quite a lot from Israeli industry, from Intel to Cellebrite
All observation of U.S.-Israel relations since 1967 indicate that it's driven by a very strong ideological (and perceived electoral) component. In fact it's hard to think of a single case of a ("friendly") country for which the degree of U.S. support is less ideological.
Pork barreling plays a role for sure as well, but it's definitely second fiddle.
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.
It's definitely more complicated by that, there is some evidence that people in the Gaza area have definitely supported Hamas, but of course they're rejected by the PNA (which rules over West Bank) and Israel.
Such as when they were elected.
(I am not trying to equate these groups; just compare the official vs force relationships)
You appear to be misinformed. Hamas won regular elections (considered such by international observers, who also reported obstructions from Israel). Hamas then kept respecting the ongoing ceasefire with Israel and started softening its stance towards it, offering a permanent ceasefire, while on the other side Israel campaigned to put the Gaza strip under the strictest embargo. On June 8th, two days before the end of the ceasefire, Israel killed an Hamas official in an air strike.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative...
Wonder whose fault you think it is that the Palestinians who currently live under what HRW and several Israeli human rights organizations consider apartheid, don't have a state.
Like it or not the government of Israel and the PLO made a good-faith effort to establish a legitimate Palestinian state. It is not an easy task, the solution is not simple and there are a lot of legitimate grievances on both sides that need to be sorted out. Unfortunately groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and various other terrorist organizations have derailed that process. There is no cabal hiding in the background and pulling the strings to sow chaos in Palestinian society (do people really need to be told that wild conspiracy theories are nonsense?).
Like it or not the vast majority of palestinians alive today had nothing to do with what hamas did 15 years ago. They were mostly children or not even born yet.
To me that seems exceptionally unjust.
You seem to think Hamas is some long-past group. Hamas controls Gaza today; they are the ones launching rockets at Israel right now. Hamas remains the most significant obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians right now. As the rulers of Gaza, Hamas has been a brutally repressive regime, roughly on the level of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Hamas deliberately spreads their military assets across densely populated civilian areas in order to maximize civilian casualties during war. The Hamas charter says that the role of women in society is to produce more men. They have cracked down on hip-hop, baggy pants, hair salons, and even indigenous Palestinian folk tales.
I personally think the Palestinians deserve better than Hamas. Why do you keep dismissing the overwhelmingly negative impact this group has had on the Palestinian people? Why do you keep looking for a way to deny the role Hamas has played and continues to play in preventing the formation of an effective civil government and a functioning Palestinian state?
Israel holds all the cards here, not the palestinians. Not hamas. Israel is the party that must step up and provide a real solution. Israel's solution over the past decade has been to contain the palestinians, lock their borders, and knock over their buildings whenever they get too uppity. This policy will never result in a reduction of terrorists. It will never result in removing the conditions that allow hamas to exist.
Imagine if you are a 20 year old gazan (older than the average gazan) and all you know, your entire life, is israeli control of the strip. The death tolls aren't high enough that everyone has a dead family member, but i wouldn't be surprised if everyone knows someone the IDF killed. This is how america created terrorists in the middle east. This is how Israel is creating terrorists in their own backyard. Foreign politicians enforcing their will, through force, upon a people that don't want it.
Hamas isn't long past, the fact is Hamas is not particularly important. Hamas is a symptom, not the problem. If Israel had the will to fix their structural problems, Hamas would have no reason to exist.
Hamas is throwing unguided missles randomly and Israel is hitting them back by leveling buildings. Hamas is no more than a small child throwing a tantrum with no possibility to actually cause a change. All they can do is scream louder and hope someone else will do something. Again, Hamas is not the problem, they are a symptom of Israel's policy regarding palestinians.
Take a minute to think about that. Israel left Gaza completely, and then Hamas took over. Are you saying that turning over Gaza to Palestinians is the sort of restrictive measure that gives rise to terrorist groups?
You are absolutely wrong about Israel holding all the cards. The blockade of Gaza is a joint effort between Israel and Egypt. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank refuses to pay for electricity in Gaza. Hamas has diverted aid shipments to its own military infrastructure, preventing Gazans from repairing their buildings, and Hamas has previously insisted that shipments of fuel enter through the border crossing with Egypt because they do not want to accept any help from "Zionists." So how does Israel hold "all the cards?" In reality the cards are held by Israel, Egypt, the PA, and Hamas itself.
Meanwhile, over in the West Bank, Palestinians have plenty of legitimate complaints yet the PA manages to engage in joint security, law enforcement, and economic efforts with Israel. Sure, things could be better for the Palestinians in the West Bank, but that is exactly the goal of the peace process and all those joint efforts.
You seem to be confused about cause and effect. The situation in Gaza today is not the reason Hamas took power; Hamas is the reason for the conditions in Gaza. Hamas started a civil war among Palestinians, and as a result the PA refuses to pay the bills for Gaza, leaving them with sporadic and unreliable electricity. Hamas kept smuggling rockets into Gaza, then firing those rockets at Israeli cities, resulting in the Israeli blockade. Hamas kept smuggling rockets into Gaza through Egypt, arming Egyptian rebels, and using Sinai as a staging area to fire rockets at Israel, resulting in Egypt joining the blockade. Hamas spread its military assets across densely populated civilian areas, resulting in far higher civilian casualties and widespread damage to civilian buildings when the IDF responds to the rocket fire. Hamas diverted aid shipments of construction supplies to its tunnel network, preventing Gazans from rebuilding their damaged buildings during the ceasefire. What kind of mental gymnastics do you have to perform to conclude that Hamas is merely a symptom of some other problem?
Google being a "US Company" they are following that law.
KBA applies to operators of imaging satellites, Google's suppliers such as Maxar. In practice, it doesn't apply to distributors, only acquirers. (The text of KBA talks about issuing licenses for "dissemination" of satellite images, but you don't need a license to resell satellite images, or buy them then give them away for free like Google does.)
Legally, there is nothing stopping Google from using a non-US imagery supplier to get higher resolution images of Israel into Google Maps.
In practice, they probably don't want to. It is walking into a political minefield, and Google doesn't really gain anything for themselves by walking into that minefield.