GAZA – Google this week was under fire by Palestinian activists for removing the word “Palestine” from Google Maps.

However, according to Google, the word was never there to begin with.

An online petition from March condemning Google (and insinuating its “two Jewish founders” removed the word “Palestine” because of their alleged ties to Israel) had collected more than 280,000 signatures by Wednesday calling for a boycott. More than 180,000 of those signatures came from the last 24 hours.

A hashtag, #PalestineIsHere, was born. But as far as Google Maps is concerned, it actually had not been.

“There has never been a ‘Palestine’ label on Google Maps, however we discovered a bug that removed the labels for ‘West Bank’ and ‘Gaza Strip,’ ” Goggle said in a statement. “We’re working quickly to bring these labels back to the area.”

According to the New York Times, Elizabeth Davidoff, a spokeswoman, said in an email that the company had also never used the label “Palestinian territories” on its maps. 

The bug affecting the words “Gaza Strip” and “West Bank” persisted on Wednesday, but when Google Maps functions properly both areas are labeled and separated from Israel by a dotted line to signify that their borders are not internationally recognized.

The word “Palestine” was recently removed from the local home page of the company’s search engine, but the reason was aesthetic, not political,. Davidoff said.

It was taken down to make space for an Olympics-themed Google doodle, a design that sometimes greets users, as were country-specific tag lines for every country in the world.

“There’s no Google-wide effort to remove Palestine or anything like that,” Davidoff said in an email. 

She said a GIF circulating online (and shared by the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace) that claimed to show a before-and-after image that proved the alleged deletion, was fake.