With fires under control, Israel turns to recovery efforts

Police said they had arrested 14 people on suspicion of negligence or deliberately starting fires, without providing details about their identities.

Local media quoted authorities as saying an estimated 700 homes have so far been damaged or destroyed by the fires.

“Netanyahu also appreciates the fact that Jews and Arabs have taken victims of the fire to their homes”, a statement by the prime minister’s office said.

Police and firefighters say almost all of the blazes that raged across parts of Israel and the West Bank for most of last week are out.

The Palestinian fire department sent three firefighting vehicles from Ramallah to help the Israeli forces to put out the fire, as the entire 1,000-people community of the settlement of Halamish was evacuated.

Israeli police have arrested a number of people in connection with the fires.

Israel’s Cabinet held its weekly meeting in Haifa to show support for the thousands of people displaced by the wildfires that ravaged Israel in recent days.

An extended period of dry autumn weather combined with strong winds fanned the flames and caused authorities to order the evacuation of some 80,000 residents from the northern port of Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city.

Since Tuesday, Israeli firefighters had been battling wildfires throughout the country which on Thursday hit major city Haifa, forcing at least 60,000 people to evacuate their homes. He said there were “minorities” among the suspects, apparently referring to Arab Israeli citizens or Palestinians.

“It’s likely that there is a nationalist motive in some of the arson cases”, Alsheich said at a press conference in Haifa.

Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Turkey and Russian Federation offered help, with several aircraft already joining efforts to quell the blaze, dropping fire-retardant material to try to douse the heaviest fires and stem their spread.

“Only those to whom the country does not belong are capable of burning it”, he said on Twitter. Israel police said they had detained four Palestinians believed to have started the fire, though it was not clear if it was on goal or by accident.

Residents of eight neighborhoods in the northern city of Haifa were told to evacuate their homes on Thursday afternoon, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

The fires have prompted wide discussion among Palestinians on social media.

It was used there in 2010, the last time there were serious fires in Israel, when more than 40 people died. After spending the night outside their homes, those affected did not even wait for the official authorization – issued on Friday – to return to their homes, and many returned to check the damages and collect their personal effects to spend the weekend elsewhere. But Ayman Odeh, a leading Israeli Arab politician from Haifa, rejected the suggestion Arabs were responsible for arson attacks and accused the Israeli government of taking advantage of the situation to incite against the Arab minority.