Palestinian Arson in Israel is Proof That Many Palestinians Do Not ‘Love’ the Land of ‘Palestine’

Palestinians have been rejoicing at the sight of Israeli land being set on fire by incendiary balloons. A report is here:

There are plenty of signs that last week’s fires, like waves of wildfires in 2019 and 2016, were at least in part another mutation of Palestinian terrorism. Retired Fire and Rescue Services official Ran Shalaf, who used to head arson investigations for the department, said as much five years ago. Fire and rescue officials, as well as defense officials, are saying exactly the same thing today, and the Public Security Ministry also thinks that many of the fires were arson. According to ministry data, some 37,000 dunams (9,100 acres) are burned in Israel every year. This equates to two-thirds of the jurisdiction of the city of Tel Aviv.

The Israeli experts, including Ran Shalaf, who before his retirement was the chief of arson investigations for the Fire and Rescue Services, has for five years been warning about arson as a weapon of choice of Arab terrorists. Fire and rescue officials, and defense officials, have been echoing his warnings ever since. Clearly, arson comes not only from the incendiary balloons set loose by Hamas from Gaza, but also fires are set by Arabs inside Israel and in the territories..

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, back when he was serving as education minister and was not politically dependent on MK Mansour Abbas and his Muslim Brotherhood party, explained that there was no such thing as a “random wave of fires,” but rather “a wave of ethno-religious terrorism by fire terrorists that is designed to murder civilians in their homes, hurt people, damage property, and create a threat.” In 2016, Bennett demanded that we “call it what it is.” At the time, he was also talking about the Palestinian Authority, which last week sent fire trucks to battle the fire that was burning in the Judean hills. Bennett thought that the PA shouldn’t be let of the hook, after “lighting fires of hatred and throwing antisemitic poison at school students in its textbooks and its official TV station, it offers help putting them out.”

In the past, before he became Prime Minister and had to keep Mansour Abbas and the Ra’am (Arab) Party in his coalition, Naftali Bennet was forthright in his condemnation of Palestinian and Arab arson. He declared that there was no such thing as a “random wave of fires,” that instead the fires were “a wave of ethno-religious terrorism…designed to murder civilians in their homes, hurt people, damage property, and create a threat.” He needs to repeat that no-nonsense recognition, and denunciation, of Arab arson.

This time, too, findings could lead to the conclusion that this was the work of fire terrorists, although even now, there is no accepted legal standard of evidence to prove that a fire was set because of an ethno-religious motive. There is only great frustration that the parties at fault will not pay for their deeds.

In 2016, the fire burned for five days in the hills around Jerusalem, the Galilee, Gilboa, in the Sharon region and on the Carmel. A total of 80,000 people from the Haifa area were evacuated, and the Fire and Rescue Services reported that they had addressed over 1,700 separate fires. The Shin Bet security agency and the Israel Police arrested 37 suspects, both Arab Israelis and Palestinians. Most were released. Only six indictments were filed against 13 suspects. The ethno-religious motive was mentioned in only one. Most of the cases ended with short prison sentences of under two years, even though an arson conviction carries a 15-year sentence, according to the law. It’s very hard to understand the people who set the fires. Anyone who loves their land and the landscapes of his homeland – Jew or Arab – doesn’t burn them.

Arson is very had to prove; in the case of 1,700 separate fires in Israel in 2016, there were only 37 arrests of suspects; only six of those led to indictments; most of those six received sentences of under two years – a derisory punishment that will deter no one – despite the law mandating a 15-year sentence for an arson conviction. This suggests that the six people indicted were convicted on lesser charges than arson.

We are left with the recognition that the supposed Arab attachment to the land of “Palestine” is hollow; the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Arabs who participate in arson, and the many others who cheer them on, taking satisfaction in such destruction, do not “love” the Land of Palestine. They are willing to contemplate the destruction of that land through arson, just as long as it deprives the hated Zionists of their farmlands and forests.

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