JERUSALEM — Israeli forces mounted a rescue mission into a Palestinian village amid gun battles after two soldiers entered the area due to an apparent error on a satellite navigation app, Israeli authorities said Tuesday.
The clashes late Monday in the Qalandiya refugee camp outside Jerusalem left at least one Palestinian dead and 10 injured, one seriously. At least 10 Israeli soldiers also were wounded during the hour-long operation.
According to initial Israeli reports, the two soldiers said they had been using Waze, a highly touted Israeli-invented navigation app bought two years ago by Google. The smartphone app, which has a settings option to “avoid dangerous areas,” relies on crowdsourcing to give users the fastest traffic routes.
But in places where the app is not widely used – such as the Palestinian villages surrounding Jerusalem and in the West Bank – the service could face limitations.
Agence France-Presse quoted a Waze official as saying the device setting to warn about areas “dangerous or prohibited for Israelis to drive through” was off.
“In this case, the setting was disabled. In addition, the driver deviated from the suggested route and, as a result, entered the prohibited area,” the official told the news agency.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, said the two soldiers were from a noncombat unit and had been using the Waze system, which led them into the Palestinian refugee camp by mistake.
It remained unclear how the soldiers could have stumbled into the middle of the camp, sandwiched between Jerusalem and Ramallah. To reach Qalandiya, the soldiers would have had to pass by the so-called separation barrier and through an Israeli checkpoint.
In the camp, they were “stormed by a mob of people with rocks and molotov cocktails,” Lerner said. Their jeep was blocked from turning around and caught fire. The soldiers fled in separate directions.
One of the soldiers had a mobile phone and within 30 minutes was located by several backup units of soldiers and Israeli police. The second soldier was found an hour later in the vicinity of an Israeli settlement.
While the search operation was underway, a firefight broke out with armed Palestinians in the camp.
During the rescue operation, troops initiated the Hannibal protocol, allowing soldiers to raise the level of alert, increase the number of forces in the area and “carry out an extraction as fast as possible in order to end the incident,” Lerner said.
The protocol has often been criticized, as it allows for extraordinary military measures to prevent soldiers from being abducted.
Palestinian sources reported that at least 10 Qalandiya residents were injured during the clashes and that Iyad Omar Sajadiyya, a 22-year-old student at al-Quds University, was killed.
The Washington Post’s West Bank correspondent, Sufian Taha, who witnessed the battle, described Qalandiya as a “war zone.”
“There was a lot traffic, and you could hear the shooting like rain falling. Bullets were coming from every direction,” he said. “Suddenly a large number of soldiers arrived and about 20 armored jeeps entered the camp.”
In an interview on Israel Radio, a former military commander of the area, Gadi Shamni, said the Qalandiya refugee camp was a symbol of Palestinian resistance and that it had become a no man’s land, where neither the Palestinian Authority nor the Israeli authorities were in control.
“This vacuum attracts violent gangs and a lot of armed people. There are incidents of shooting almost every evening in Qalandiya, certainly when the [Israeli military] enters,” he said.
Tension between Israelis and Palestinians has been running high over the past five months, with almost daily stabbing, shooting and vehicular attacks by Palestinians against Israelis. The violence has left at least 29 Israeli citizens and three foreign nationals dead.
More than 165 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis, most while carrying out attacks against Israelis and the rest during clashes with the Israeli military.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Ruth Eglash
