A Palestinian in Ramallah proudly shows his blood-stained hands after participating in lynch of IDF reservists in 2000. (Wikipedia)
Three Israelis who accidentally drove into Ramallah were rescued by Palestinian and Israeli security forces.
Three Israelis who mistakenly entered Ramallah on Saturday were escorted out of the city by Palestinian Authority (PA) police and transferred to Israeli authorities outside the Jewish community of Beit El in Samaria.
Officials did not explain how the Israelis wound up in Ramallah, but similar incidents have been caused by IDF soldiers following driving instructions on their smartphones.
In September, two female soldiers using a navigation app entered the PA-controlled town of Tulkarem. Palestinians descended on the unarmed women with a flurry of rocks, injuring them before they were rescued by a joint operation of Palestinian police and the IDF.
In February, the IDF faced serious resistance when they arrived to rescue soldiers lost in Qalandiya and were forced to fire at the rioters, killing one and injuring several others.
In an incident unrelated to smartphones, nine Israelis entered Ramallah, in defiance of a law prohibiting Jews from entering the area, in order to show their support for Muslims by celebrating Ramadan with them. The Jewish visitors were viciously attacked and had to be rescued by Israeli security forces.
The most serious case of all occurred in 2000, when a Palestinian mob broke into a PA police station, killing and mutilating the bodies of two IDF reservists, Vadim Nurzhits and Yossi Avrahami. They had accidentally entered Ramallah and were being held in custody by PA policemen. Aziz Salha, one of the lynchers who was seen in the now famous photo of him waving his blood-stained hands from the police station window, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Israel for the murders, but he was released in 2011 in a prisoner exchange.
The IDF has instructed its soldiers not to rely solely on Waze or other traffic navigation apps when traveling near the PA-administered areas of Judea and Samaria.
By: Eli Stein, World Israel News
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