3 Israelis take wrong turn in West Bank, rescued by PA police

Three Israelis mistakenly drove into the West Bank city of Ramallah on Saturday, and were safely rescued with the assistance of Palestinian Authority security forces.

The three were escorted out of the city by the PA forces and handed over to Israeli police at the Focus checkpoint near the settlement of Beit El, said the Ynet news website.

The incident was the latest in a spate of similar events of Israelis — mostly soldiers — being rescued after erroneously entering Palestinian areas of the West Bank.

Last month, an IDF soldier was lightly wounded when rocks were thrown at his vehicle after he and three other servicemen “mistakenly entered” a Palestinian village in the northern West Bank, the army said.

The army did not say how the soldiers accidentally entered Anabta, a town east of Tulkarem. In the past, however, such incidents occurred due to troops relying on smartphone navigation apps.

As the soldiers were exiting the Palestinian city, local residents began throwing rocks at the military vehicle, the army said. The four soldiers, some of them reservists, were escorted out of the city by Palestinian police and in conjunction with the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration.

In September, two female soldiers entered Tulkarem and sustained mild injuries from rocks thrown at them before they were rescued by local Palestinian police and Defense Ministry officials. An initial probe of that incident revealed that not only had the two soldiers relied on a navigation app, but they had entered Tulkarem unarmed.

In the most serious incident so far, in February, one Palestinian was killed and several injured in clashes in the Qalandiya refugee camp near Jerusalem sparked by an attempt to rescue lost soldiers.

Each time, the IDF repeats the importance of not relying solely on traffic navigation apps such as Waze.

— Judah Ari Gross contributed to this report