Friday, December 4, 2015

New apps help Palestinians navigate Israeli checkpoints

A pair of new mobile apps hope to help Palestinians navigate snarled traffic at Israeli checkpoints in the occupied West Bank, offering a hi-tech response to constant and burdensome restrictions on movement.
"Azmeh", which means traffic jam in Arabic, and "Qalandiya", the name of a major Israeli checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem, join a slew of other global traffic apps, including the Israeli-developed Waze.
What sets the two Palestinian apps apart is how they go beyond daily rush-hour traffic and touch at the heart of a central Palestinian criticism of Israeli occupation. They are designed to run on slow local networks - a necessity because Israel has not granted Palestinian telecommunication companies swifter 3G access.
The free apps, launched over the past month, have been downloaded a few thousand times each. As they grow in popularity, their developers say the crowdsourced apps present a partial solution to the traffic jams that checkpoints cause, and they hope they will catch on with drivers

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