Israel fires: Netanyahu vows punishment for ‘arson terrorism’

Foreign firefighting planes on Friday helped Israel tackle a wave of wildfires that have forced tens of thousands to flee their homes, as police announced a dozen related arrests.

At least two teams of Palestinian firefighters deployed to Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, after wildfires sparked the evacuation of the city’s university, Israeli police officer Micky Rosenfeld told Newsweek.

A leader of Israeli settlers said that the fires raging in Israel, which officials partly attribute to Palestinian arsonists, are really divine punishment for the government’s plans to uproot settlements.

Police said one man from the Bedouin village of Rahat in southern Israel had been arrested for incitement after he posted a message on his Facebook page calling on others to start fires. “And we will treat it as such”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters gathered in Haifa. He said arson was suspected in about half of the fires.

Greece, Russia, and Turkey along with a number of other countries have offered to send several aircraft to assist with efforts to extinguish the fires.

A spokesperson of the Israeli fire and rescue authority confirmed that firefighters were able to put out numerous fires that had broken out in neighborhoods in Haifa with the help of Palestinian civil defense crews, and Greek and Croation airplanes.

The Spirit of John Muir is the world’s youngest Very Large Air Tanker (VLAT), and has nearly twice the capacity of the next biggest aerial tanker.

The situation has been worsened because of hot, dry weather and high winds. Several adults and children were treated for smoke inhalation as thousands were evacuated from the city. Several large buildings were engulfed by the fires.

Some 80,000 people were briefly evacuated from some neighborhoods of Haifa but they were allowed to return to their homes Friday.

A large fire that blazed in Harashim, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) to the northeast of Haifa, was extinguished as of Friday afternoon. Israel’s prison services said this time, too, that two prisons in the area would be emptied. Israel’s electric company said power lines were down in more than 700 residences and damage was widespread. “It is near schools, gas stations, and there are a lot of cars that are stuck in traffic jams as people try to leave Haifa”, Hamer said.

Police said the blazes started early Tuesday morning at Neve Shalom, a community outside Jerusalem where Jews and Arabs live together. They know there is no reason to hastily draw targets, but mainly that such irresponsible accusations could ignite far more unsafe fires that no supertanker can extinguish.