Official Israeli map website reveals location of IDF bases in Gaza

The Israeli government’s official public mapping site, govmap, recently uncensored previously blurred sections of the Gaza Strip, revealing the locations of military positions in high definition.

The change was first noted on Monday by “Stinky,” a social media account dedicated to open-source intelligence (OSINT), especially geo-locating incidents in the Gaza Strip.

Previously, govmap.gov.il would censor and blur all portions of the Gaza Strip in its aerial imagery, right up until the Israeli security fence. Military bases and other sensitive sites inside Israel and the West Bank are also blurred.

However, 2025 imagery recently published by govmap now reveals unblurred sections of the Strip’s north, including at least 11 Israeli army sites inside the military’s buffer zone.

The imagery also shows massive destruction to Palestinian towns in the area, as a result of the fighting between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas in the past three years.

It was unclear if the unblurring was part of a new policy or an error.

“The biggest difficulty when working with Gaza OSINT has been the lack of high-resolution photographs over the northern portion of the Strip,” Stinky told The Times of Israel, noting that the other options, such as the European Commission’s Sentinel-2 satellite, processed by the Copernicus Browser site, are “very low resolution.” Google Maps, meanwhile, has updated high-resolution imagery only in some sections of southern and central Gaza.

“If govmap determines that it is okay to keep that part of the Strip [that is now unblurred], it will be very useful when it comes to future geolocations and analysis in this area,” he added.

The Times of Israel reached out to govmap for a response, but had yet to receive one as of Monday night.

The IDF told The Times of Israel that it was looking into the imagery.