Israel Update for December 2010

David Dolan

As in many other parts of the world, December was a month of extreme weather conditions in Israel, helping to spark off the deadliest ever forest fire in the country's short modern history, followed by heavy rains which fell later in the month. Ironically, the huge conflagration in the Carmel forest near the port city of Haifa helped improve severely strained relations with Turkey. It also added to growing cooperation between Israel and Greece. The Palestinian Authority even got into the act, sending a firefighting squad to help Israel battle the devastating blaze.

As is the case with many things in the Jewish state, the massive fire-Israel's worst ever natural disaster-also had security implications, revealing a major deficiency in the country's potential war-fighting capability. This led to pointed criticism of the government and the military, with many charging that neither body is adequately prepared to deal with the likelihood that any future confrontation involving major missile strikes could ignite raging fires like the one which left scores of Israelis dead in early December. Vowing that his government would learn the necessary lessons from the huge blaze, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called for the establishment of a regional firefighting team that would be mutually beneficial to all participating countries.

As the local Christian community was preparing to celebrate the Christmas and New Year holidays, a brutal terrorist assault upon two believing women dominated Israel's media headlines. The attack, in a forest near Jerusalem, left an American Christian tourist dead and a local Messianic Jewish believer severely wounded. This came just as the Arab town of Bethlehem began hosting large numbers of Christian visitors for the annual holiday season at the end of a year when Israeli tourism numbers broke all previous records.

American government officials continued their efforts to jumpstart stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks during December as the Palestinian Authority again stated it would declare unilateral statehood during the second half of 2011. Meanwhile a series of South American countries, led by Brazil, announced that they already recognize the existence of such a state, with the eastern half of Jerusalem as its capital. American and European officials said once again that any statehood declaration must be arrived at in cooperation with Israel, which is naturally the Netanyahu government's official position as well.

As the second anniversary of the Israeli 'Cast Iron' military operation against Hamas militia forces in the Gaza Strip drew near, militant Palestinians stepped up rocket attacks on Israeli civilian centres in the vicinity of the Hamas-ruled Palestinian coastal zone. This in turn prompted return IDF fire upon Palestinian targets. Later in the month, a new 'humanitarian aid' convoy, designed to break Israel's naval blockade of the sealed-off zone, was reportedly being assembled in Lebanon. News reports said it was mainly comprised of participants from Muslim countries in Asia. This came as security analysts reported that a software virus had crippled a significant portion of Iran's nuclear centrifuge enrichment facility in the city of Natanz.

Carmel Forest Fire Devestates Israel

Numerous security analysts predict that future Middle East wars may well be fought over dwindling fresh water resources in the parched, semi-arid region. During the first few years of the 21st century, Israel and surrounding countries enjoyed average, or even above average, winter rainfalls. This followed several years of severe drought conditions which prevailed during the second half of the 1990s. Rain shortfalls began to reappear once again during the winter of 2004-05. This pattern has continued uninterrupted ever since. Meanwhile, growing regional populations are demanding more and more water for home, commercial and agricultural use.

During the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s and early 90s, Arab arsonists took advantage of overly dry conditions to light forest fires in many parts of the country. They did the same thing during the Al Aksa attrition war which began in late 2000, but mainly during the hot summer months when rain rarely falls in the region. Despite this history, police investigators said Israel's deadliest forest fire ever, which broke out the first day of December in the Mount Carmel forest south of Haifa, was not started by Palestinian arsonists for nationalistic reasons. Instead, the destructive blaze was thought to have been inadvertently set off by some Israeli Druze teenagers who police said were smoking apple-spiced tobacco in a water pipe in a grove of trees near their Druze village, wishing to avoid detection by their family. In the end, the alleged perpetrators became nationally known figures who were arrested and charged with carelessly tossing glowing embers into tinder-dry scrub brush and trees, igniting the ferocious inferno.

Normally, the biblical 'early rains' have already begun to water the Lord's special land by the middle of October, or at least by the beginning of November. However by early December 2010, the overall drought pattern of recent years left Israel with above-average temperatures and precious little rainfall. Coupled with high winds, the Carmel wildfire rapidly spread in the thick forest as Israeli firefighters scrambled to battle it.

The conflagration raced in the direction of a security prison located in the forest, which houses hundreds of inmates. To help evacuate the endangered convicts from the area, a busload of Israeli prison guard trainees was traveling on a road toward the prison when the spreading fire suddenly overtook them, setting their bus ablaze. Security personnel traveling in vehicles behind the bus, including Ahuva Tomer, Haifa's first-ever female police chief, rushed to the scene after the transport bus erupted in flames. They scurried out of their vehicles to help rescue the trapped Israeli trainees. Tomer, who was well known and widely respected for heading up Israel's largest police force in an adroit manner, soon discovered that her own clothing had caught fire, as did several other rescuers.

Meantime the forest fire galloped forward like a consuming demon, fed by furious winds made stronger by the intense heat generated in the area by the raging blaze. By the end of the day, a shocking 41 Israelis were burnt to death or asphyxiated by the fast-moving conflagration, 36 of them inside the destroyed bus. Two policemen and one firefighter also perished. Tomer clung to her life in Haifa's Rambam hospital for several days before succumbing to her burn wounds, bringing the overall death toll to 42, with several others injured.

Many Nations Join The Battle

As medical personnel around the small country were put on high alert to receive potential patients, two major highways along the coast that run south to Tel Aviv were quickly closed due to heavy smoke blanketing them. Rescue units and firefighters were brought in from many localities. Israeli police forces then ordered the evacuation of thousands of homes located along the edge of the Carmel forest, and therefore in the potential path of the fast moving fire. They also told thousands of area residents to be ready to leave their dwellings on short notice. Around 17,000 people were eventually forced to abandon their homes. As thick smoke engulfed Israel's third largest urban area, Haifa city officials shut down Haifa University and other public institutions in the vicinity of the blaze. They also placed several neighborhoods on alert for possible short-notice abandonment.

In the end, a total of 170 homes caught fire, leaving most of them badly damaged or destroyed. Over 12,500 acres of forest land was burnt up, killing or seriously damaging hundreds of thousands of trees in what is one of Israel's premier national forests. Making the fire all the more fierce, security forces intercepted several people who were caught in the act of setting additional blazes in the forest. Two of the arsonists were young Druze men who were filmed by an Israeli drone aircraft as they were sparking off more fires. Officials warned that anyone caught setting fires would be severely prosecuted. However this did not stop several more arson attacks in the week after the Carmel blaze began.