Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said in Sunday’s cabinet meeting (held in the Carmel region where a massive fire has been burning out of control since Thursday): “We are still in the midst of a massive forest fire. The firefighters are doing holy work but it must be understood that this kind of wildfire can only be defeated and extinguished from the air. On this we have been working day and night. We have mobilized over 30 aircraft from the nations of the world. Today, a gigantic ‘Supertanker’ plane that we rented from an American company is due to go into action. I believe that with these tools, it will be possible to contain and extinguish the fire. It must be understood that massive forest fires are fundamentally different from routine fires. The only way to deal with these wildfires is to integrate not only ground forces but aerial forces as well, local and international alike. Thus the major powers have acted. In a massive wildfire in California a few years ago, the US received assistance from eight countries; it neither hesitated nor was ashamed to request this assistance, including from countries from which we have made similar requests. In last summer’s massive wildfire in Russia, Russia neither hesitated nor was ashamed to request assistance from Ukraine and from other countries. We also did not hesitate, nor were we ashamed, in requesting such assistance. This is what we did and it has led to results. We will take control of, contain and – in the end – extinguish the fire. An additional subject is the establishment of a local aerial firefighting force. Even if we had such a force, and we are working on it, it will not always free us of the need to mobilize international support, but it would give us the possibility of bringing an aerial ‘cup of water’ to fires. The issue of closing the gaps in the conventional, ground-based, not aerial, firefighting network is an important issue. The Government has begun to deal with this issue, which has demanded a solution for 62 years. We have started to deal with it. We have added budgets. We are promoting changes but this issue has always been separate from that of massive brushfires”…
Again in today’s Cabinet meeting, there was almost no mention of Israel’s Interior Minister, Eli Yishai (of the Shas religious party), who is being blamed for part of the country’s lack of preparedness to deal with such a fire.
UPDATE: By Sunday evening, Israeli authorities announced that the Carmel fire was finally under control, four days after it started, and after a 35-plane assault on the flames during the day. But, officials cautioned that it will still take days to extinguish the blaze completely.
On Sunday morning, some 21 Palestinian firefighters were escorted by the “Civil Administration” (i.e., the Israeli Army in the West Bank) through the Salem checkpoint and into Israel to join hundreds of other firefighters from around the world in the battle against the Carmel blaze, according to a report in YNet, here, which added this detail: “I’ve dreamed of visiting Haifa for a long time,” Ibrahim Ayash, the head of the Palestinian rescue team [who is reportedly from Bethlehem] told Ynet, “But unfortunately I came at a very sad time.”
The Palestinian firefighters reportedly travelled at the direct order of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, according to a report in Ma’an News Agency, here. According to the head of the Palestinian civil defense team that entered Israel on Sunday, the group left the West Bank at 4 a.m. and arrived at northern Israel five hours later. “Neither walls nor checkpoints will stop us”, he said, noting that the Palestinian firemen were “received respectfully”.
UPDATE & CLARIFICATION: Back in his office in Bethlehem on Monday, Major Ibrahim Aish [rather than Ayash] said that he and his team had been fighting smaller separate fires that had broken out in Israeli villages not far from Jenin on Monday, and that he had been involved in fighting fires near Beit Shemesh (south of Bethlehem on several occasions in recent years. But, the one-day round trip on Sunday to the Haifa area was the Palestinian firefighters’ only involvement in the Carmel blaze.