Agence France-Presse quoted a Waze official on Tuesday as saying that the setting to warn about areas “dangerous or prohibited for Israelis to drive through” had been switched off on the device the soldiers used.
“In this case, the setting was disabled,” the official told the news agency. “In addition, the driver deviated from the suggested route and, as a result, entered the prohibited area.”
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli army, said the two soldiers were from a noncombat unit and had been using the Waze system, which he said 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 the West Bank city of Ramallah. To reach Qalandiya, the soldiers would have had to pass by the separation barrier between the West Bank and Israel and through an Israeli checkpoint.
