The IDF is warning its soldiers – and not for the first time – not to rely on GPS apps when driving from one location to another.

Many places in Israel and the Palestinian Authority have the same, or similar names, military officials note.

Soldiers were also reminded to keep their weapons with them, especially after nightfall.

The warning comes after two female paratroop soldiers were headed to their base this week and took a wrong turn due to erroneous directions on a GPS app.

They ended up in the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Tulkarem, a few miles east of Netanya – and barely made it out alive.

Both women were injured in the stoning attack that followed, and had to be rescued by local police and defense ministry officials.

Another round of mortar fire from Syria reportedly struck the Golan Heights in northern Israel from Syria. The IDF located four artillery shells in the northern part of the Golan Heights by Wednesday night, Ynet reported, allegedly more of the “spillovery” from the raging civil war taking place across the border.

If the report is confirmed, it will be the third day in a row for what has become a continuing series of mortar fire despite Israeli military efforts to deter, or at least, contain an escalating situation on the northern border.

This is the eighth time the region has been hit by “spillover” action from the raging civil war taking place on the Syrian side of the border.

The attacks have continued despite retaliatory Israeli Air Force air strikes and IDF artillery fire intended as a warning to prevent further shelling.

On Tuesday, the IDF closed Route 98 in the north after the third mortar shell of the day came whistling into the region from across the border.

That attack came just 24 hours after two projectiles landed in Israel from Syria.

The Golan Heights also was attacked on Monday, and over the weekend as well.

The Israeli government has issued a statement after each attack, warning that it holds the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad responsible for all activity that takes place within its territory, military and otherwise.

Israeli Minister of Defense Avigdor Liberman tours a submarine at the IDF navy base in the Northern Israeli town of Haifa.

The Israel Defense Force has again retaliated for several rounds of renewed mortar fire on Tuesday that was directed — albeit perhaps unintentionally — at northern Israel’s Golan Heights.

“In response to the projectiles which hit Israel earlier today, IAF aircraft targeted artillery positions of the Syrian regime in the central Syrian Golan Heights,” the IDF said in a terse statement to media.

Earlier in the day, Israeli authorities closed Route 98 in the northern part of the country, deeming it unsafe for civilians to travel in the area due to the shelling from Syria.

Israel hold the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad responsible for any actions taken on the Syrian side of the border.

The Ofek 11 observation (spy) satellite launched Tuesday by Israel is experiencing a few hiccups.

The satellite was launched into space from Palmahim air base south of Tel Aviv, but the Defense Ministry has since become concerned that systems aboard the aircraft may not be functioning properly.

According to Aerospace Director Amnon Harari, not everything is going the way it should be – but it’s hard to tell, because the satellite is not constantly accessible to crews on the ground, the way a communications satellite would be.

“There are indications that show us that things may not be working as we expected,” Harari said. “It will take a few days to determine whether the launch was successful.”

The satellite orbits the earth once every hour and a half, and according to Israel Aircraft Industries aerospace director Ofer Doron, a few things are “not quite routine,” but operators are continuing their diagnostics.

Operators have access to the Ofek 11 only for a few short hours once a day, so it may take a few days before the tech teams know for sure whether they were successful in their attempts to adjust the settings.

At around 4 PM on Tuesday, yet another mortar launched from Syria hit Israel’s Golan Heights, according to the IDF.

No one was injured in the attack.

Following yesterday’s mortar hit, Israeli Air Force jets hit a Syrian regime target in Quneitra, on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

During the strike, the Syrians launched two S-200 SAMs at the Israeli jets. Both enemy missiles missed.

Brigadier General Yaakov Nagel, Israel’s acting National Security Council, arrived in Washington DC on Tuesday to meet with President Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice, in preparations for signing a new US military aid package. The new US aid deal, which the two governments have been negotiating since November 2015, awards Israel $38 billion over 10 years.

Nagel met with US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro to work out the final details before leaving for Washington — including the text of the official announcements. The new aid package is expected to average $3.8 billion a year, a considerable cut from Netanyahu’s initial request for $4.5 billion. The deal is also contingent on Israel agreeing not to approach Congress for additional funds, as in the case of the Iron Dome missile defense system, which Congress has been paying for outside the annual aid package. Now an estimated $5 billion out of the package will be spent over 10 years on missile defense development.

In other words, the new aid package is only adding $300 million to the previous amount. To remind you, the sum of $3 billion annually was set during the Camp David peace negotiations with Egypt, as compensation to Israel for giving up the Sinai peninsula as a military asset. That amount has never been raised in close to 40 years, even though the current value of that annual package would have been $10.48 billion.

The critical disagreement between the two sides over the current deal has been whether or not Israel could continue to invest a percentage of the aid package in Israeli made military products. The Obama Administration wanted the entire amount to stay in US corporations, which would have been devastating to Israeli manufacturers and to the IDF. A short episode during the 2014 Gaza War, in which the Obama Administration stopped shipping to Israel all defense items, including Hellfire missiles, served as a memorable lesson to the Israeli security apparatus about the need to increase its self-reliance.

The new deal ended up adding six years in which Israel can continue to spend as much as 26% of the US aid money on Israeli made products, as well as another 13% for fuel purchases. By the seventh year, or halfway into Clinton’s or Trump’s second term, the Israeli military industrial complex would have to quit US aid cold turkey — Unless Netanyahu or his successor is able to renegotiate that part — depending on who is in the White House and who controls Congress at the time.