The fires, which began on Tuesday, have erupted throughout the country, blazing through parched forests, incinerating scores of homes and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee. Two prisons were also evacuated. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that “a considerable number” of the fires were set and described them as “terror,” a term usually given to militant attacks by Palestinians. “There is a price to crime, and there is a price for terror and incitement, and we will exact it,” Mr. Netanyahu said while on a tour of the Hatzor military base, according to local news reports. “The instructions are to prosecute anyone committing these acts so that all can see that anyone who tries to burn down the state of Israel will face the fullest punishment.”
Firefighters had most of the dozens of fires under control by Friday, allowing thousands of people to return to their homes in the northern port city of Haifa, one of the areas that was hit hardest. Still, new fires erupted near Jerusalem and in the Galilee in northern Israel. Hundreds of residents of Nataf, a small Jewish community near Jerusalem, were evacuated on Friday. By Friday evening, a 747 Supertanker firefighting plane from the United States had landed in Israel to be used to extinguish some of the blazes, and 50 American firefighters were expected to join the effort, Israeli news media reported. While unusually hot, dry conditions and strong winds helped fan the flames, almost half of the fires are suspected of being arson, according to Israeli security officials.
The “consensus is that this is arson,” Israel’s public security minister, Gilad Erdan, told journalists on Friday. In one instance, Mr. Erdan said, his forces had found evidence that gasoline was used to start a fire in Zikhron Yaaqov, a town in northern Israel. A man from a Jerusalem was arrested with fire-making materials, he said. By Friday evening, two more fires had been set on the Lebanese side of the border, apparently in hopes that the wind would carry the flames into Israel. Of the 22 people arrested on arson charges, one was a Palestinian who was arrested on suspicion of causing a fire early Friday in forests around the tiny Jewish community of Beit Meir near Jerusalem, Israeli news media reported. Eight were released, and 14 had their remand extended. No further information was available about the people being questioned.
Israeli officials hinted that they suspected Palestinians were behind the arsons, but Arab leaders in Israel cautioned against placing blame without proof. “Whoever burns down the country cannot be a citizen of the country, and their citizenship status should be revoked,” said Miri Regev, the culture minister, a threat usually reserved for Palestinian citizens of Israel, who form about one-fifth of the country’s population of eight million. If Palestinians set some of the fires, it would be a new and potentially disruptive tactic in a long-simmering conflict.
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