A mammoth fire extinguisher — a Boeing 747 from the U.S. carrying 20,000 gallons of water and fire retardants — joined the battle on Sunday against an inferno that raged for a fourth day in northern Israel, giving officials hope they can bring the country's worst forest fire under control by the end of the day.
Palestinian firefighters ordinarily barred from entering Israel passed through the barrier that divides the two peoples on Sunday to join the international effort. Team leader Ibrahim Ayish, of the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem, said the 21 Palestinian firefighters hoped that by helping to put out the blaze, they could ignite some good will between two sides more often embroiled in conflict.
“I hope it could be a good opening for cooperation, more humanitarian assistance, and peace,” Mr. Ayish said in a telephone interview from northern Israel.
The last time Mr. Ayish was in Israel was 10 years ago — before the Jewish state, fearing militant attacks, began severely restricting the number of Palestinians allowed to enter. It began erecting a barrier of towering concrete slabs and electronic fence several years later.
Two teenage brothers were arrested on Saturday in connection with the fire, which has killed 41 people, most of them prison guards whose bus was trapped in the fire while they were en route to evacuate a prison. The blaze has been tearing through the Carmel forest near Israel's third-largest city, Haifa, since Thursday.
While it will take days to extinguish the fire completely, firefighters hope it can be brought under control on Sunday.
The fire has caught the country — which prides itself on its technological prowess, ability to improvise and rescue expertise — woefully unprepared. That has provoked a public backlash against officials from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on down.
Though the forest fire raging in Israel's north is small by international standards, it is considered a calamity in Israel, where only seven per cent of the land is wooded. The Carmel forest makes up five per cent of that forested land and nearly half of it has burned down.
