While using the Waze GPS navigation application, two female soldiers lost their way and entered the Palestinian village of Tulkarm. Soldiers are not allowed to use Waze for navigation and there have been other cases in the past of it misleading soldiers into Palestinian towns.
When the soldiers realized they were in a Palestinian village, they called the police's emergency response hotline who advised them to continue straight ahead to return to Israeli territory. A plain-clothes Palestinian police officer told them to go in another direction. Local Palestinians who noticed them began to throw stones at their vehicle, causing light injuries.
Palestinian police forces were called and they evacuated the two soldiers to a nearby Palestinian police station. The Palestinian forces then contacted Israeli Civil Administration officers and transferred the two IDF soldiers over to the Israeli authorities.
There are different versions of how the soldiers ended up in their life-threatening situation. When they left their base in the Jordan Valley en route to their paratroopers base near Kfar Yona, they typed in their destination in Waze as Givat Alonim near Kfar Yona. However, the application turned off during the journey, causing them to accidentally drive in the direction of Tulkarm.
In another version, they intended to drive to Beit Lid military facility which Waze apparently confused with the Palestinian village of Beit Lid.
