An Israeli family—Spanish speakers—entered Ramallah on Saturday, having been guided there by their GPS navigation app, Israel’s Channel 2 News reported. When the family members realized their mistake, which could prove fatal, they called the police, and after terrifying minutes of waiting they were instructed how to retrace their steps and were connected to the Civil Administration and the IDF.
It is believed that the family – two grandparents and their three grandchildren – were using the Waze app, and whether misinterpreted the GPS instructions or due to a program error, crossed the Qalandiya checkpoint north of Jerusalem into the Palestinian Authority, some five miles from Ramallah.
Two weeks ago, two IDF soldiers, male and female, drove their military vehicle by accident into the Palestinian Authority controlled city of Jenin, and were soon after attacked by a mob of Arabs that threw stones at their vehicle and brutally attacked the soldiers, especially the female soldier. The soldiers sustained multiple bodily injuries, particularly to their face and heads.
In the case of the Israeli family that crossed into the PA Saturday, the police directed them back to safe territory, communicating with the 7-year-old grandchild (the obvious authority figure on things technological). At the same time, reserve forces of the Binyamin Brigade and the IDF civil administration were mobilized to locate the family. They finally got hold of the family at the a-Ram checkpoint, southeast of Ramallah, and escorted them to Jerusalem.
Back in January, Waze was considered the culprit in a case where three friends and their borrowed jeep sank to the bottom of an icy Lake Champlain, Vermont.