Facebook has amended its policy to allow Jewish neighborhoods located outside the 1967 borders to be included in ads targeting residents of Jerusalem.
Prior to the change, companies that advertised products or services to Israelis on Facebook would only be able to target Israelis living inside the Green Line. The ads would not reach the residents of neighborhoods established after Israel captured parts of the West Bank in east Jerusalem in the 1976 Six-Day War, such as Gilo, Pisgat Ze'ev and Neve Yaakov.
After learning of the issue from Israeli news site "Hottest Place in Hell," which 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."
