JERUSALEM (JTA) — Three Palestinians were arrested on suspicion of carrying out arson attacks in the West Bank during last month’s forest fires.

The three men were arrested on Nov. 26, in a joint operation of the Israel Defense Forces, the Israel Police and the Shin Bet security agency, the Shin Bet said in a statement released on Sunday. The arrests had been under a gag order.

The three men, Hamdan Tzakar Hamdan Lami, 19; Jouad Muhammad Fayiz Daher, 19 and Vizid Ahmed Hamdan Lami, 24, are residents of the West Bank village of Iskaka, and are suspected of carrying out arson attacks near their village and near the southern approach to the city of Ariel in the northern West Bank.

The IDF investigation determined that the three had committed arson for nationalistic motives.

Three suspects were filmed by security cameras on Nov. 25 attempting to start a fire outside of Ariel, according to the Times of Israel.

Police officials have said they suspect arson in 29 of the 39 major fires, and in about one-third of the 90 total fires they investigated. There are no suspects in the large fires in Haifa and Zichron Yaakov, nor clear proof of arson. </s> next Image 1 of 3

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Israeli police have arrested four Palestinians in connection with one of several large fires that damaged homes and prompted the evacuation of thousands of people over the past few days.

Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said on Thursday that police are investigating all possible causes, including arson. Windy and hot weather have helped fan the flames.

He says the blazes started three days ago at the Neve Shalom community near Jerusalem where Israelis and Arabs live together.

Later, fires erupted in the northern Israeli area of Zichron Yaakov and elsewhere near Jerusalem. In all, hundreds of homes have been damaged and thousands of people have been evacuated. About a dozen were treated for smoke inhalation.

Cyprus, Russia, Italy and other countries are assisting the Israeli firefighters with equipment as the fires continue. </s> JERUSALEM — Israeli firefighters battled several blazes around the country for the third day on Thursday as police said four Palestinians were arrested in connection with one of the large fires, which have damaged homes and prompted the evacuation of thousands of people.

Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police are investigating all possible causes, including arson. Windy and hot weather have helped fan the flames. He said the four arrested Palestinians will appear in court later in the day for possible involvement in one of the fires.

Several roads and schools were closed and dozens of residents were evacuated in some . Haifa Mayor Yonah Yahav told Channel 2 TV there are several points to the blaze in his city.

Yahav also said there are indications one of the fires was caused when "someone tossed a cigarette in an area full of oil and flammable fluids" in an industrial zone.

Police said the blazes started three days ago at the Neve Shalom community near Jerusalem where Israelis and Arabs live together.

Later, fires erupted in the northern Israeli area of Zichron Yaakov and elsewhere near Jerusalem. In all, hundreds of homes have been damaged and thousands of people have been evacuated. About a dozen were treated for smoke inhalation.

Several countries — including Cyprus, Russia, Italy, Croatia and Greece — are assisting the Israeli firefighters with equipment as the fires continue.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin, thanking him for his help in dealing with the fires. The premier's office said on Thursday that Russia is sending two large firefighting aircraft to Israel. </s> (JTA) — An Israeli village west of Jerusalem was evacuated due to fires raging on its margins, as some firefighting efforts were being diverted from Israel’s north to its center.

The flames nearing the village of Nataf were among three fires reported in the Jerusalem area Friday — the fourth day in which emergency services were battling multiple blazes across Israel, some of which were started by arsonist “terrorists,” according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Whereas fires were largely contained Friday in the northern city of Haifa, new blazes burned in the Jerusalem area — including a forest fire at Ma’aleh Hahamisha, which police traced back to a firebomb, and another fire at Mevo Horon in the West Bank.

On Friday, police arrested 13 people on suspicion of involvement in the fires, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told Army Radio.

Several people have been treated for smoke inhalation but no serious injuries have been reported due to the fires.

During a visit to Hazor Airbase south of Tel Aviv, Netanyahu said of the fire starters: “These are people who are very hostile to the State of Israel. We’re seeing them operating in small teams and who knows whether they intercommunicate, which they don’t necessarily need to be doing” to keep causing fires.

The fires have been fanned by hot, dry weather and high winds, but some — including in Zichron Ya’akov, near Haifa — were started by arsonists, the head of local firefighting force said following an investigation.

Netanyahu, who on Thursday vowed to punish arsonists, has accepted offers of assistance from the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan, who on Friday joined Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Russia and the United States in offering to help with firefighting equipment and personnel.

Egypt will send two helicopters, Jordan will send several trucks and the Palestinian Authority will dispatch four firefighting trucks as well.

Yona Yahav, the mayor of Haifa, which was one of the cities most heavily hit by the fires, said he was shocked to see the damage during a tour of the affected areas Friday.

“I had a difficult emotional experience,” he told Army Radio. “We take pride in how green our city is, but now everything is painted black.” Some 80,000 people were briefly evacuated from some neighborhoods of Haifa but they were allowed to return to their homes Friday.

Yahav added he had no information on the people who have been arrested on suspicion of arson, but wished to remind listeners that “there wasn’t a single Arab town in the country that didn’t contact me to offer its help.” </s> JERUSALEM -- Israeli police said Friday that at least 12 people were in custody on suspicion of starting a series of large fires that have forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes and left widespread damage across the country.

Some of the fires, which started Monday night, were still burning Friday, and numerous countries, including Russia, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt, had sent emergency crews and firefighting planes to help Israel tackle the blazes. The Palestinian Authority also sent four firefighting teams.

Israeli media reported that the largest firefighting plane, the Supertanker, was on its way from the United States and was expected to land in Israel on Friday evening. The fires have spread quickly because of gusty winds and a lack of rain.

Officials and politicians said that at least half of the fires, which raged from the Jerusalem area to the north of country, had been started intentionally for nationalist reasons. They were quick to label it a new form of terrorism.

Police have not disclosed the identities of the suspects arrested so far.

In a news conference Thursday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "Any arson or incitement to arson is terrorism. Whoever tries to burn parts of the state of Israel will be punished."

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a member of the ultranationalist Jewish Home party, said in a message on Twitter, "Only those to whom the land does not belong to are capable of burning it."

Israeli-Arab politicians said that the government was taking advantage of the situation to incite against Arabs and the Palestinians.

Overnight Thursday, a blaze engulfed the small community of Beit Meir in the Jerusalem hills, and multiple families had to be evacuated. Although there were no casualties, heavy damage was reported to some of the properties. Two people were arrested suspected of starting that fire.

On Thursday, more than 60,000 people from Haifa, which sits on Israel's northern coast and is the nation's third-largest city, were evacuated from their homes as fires blew into the center of the city. By Friday morning, however, the fires seemed under control and people slowly began to return to their homes. Israel's electric company said power lines were down in more than 700 residences and damage was widespread.

The first fire broke out Monday night near Neve Shalom, a mixed Jewish-Arab community halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. As that fire was brought under control, another erupted in Zichron Yaakov, a town just south of Haifa. There, dozens of residents were forced to flee their homes and several houses were destroyed.

On Wednesday, the community of Nataf, in the Jerusalem Hills, also came under fire. Property was damaged there, too. Israel police said they had detained four Palestinians believed to have started the fire, though it was not clear if it was on purpose or by accident.

Throughout the night Wednesday, firefighters battled blazes in other areas, too. In one place, near the city of Modi'in, police were forced to close down the main highway to Jerusalem. Also there, residents were evacuated.

More than 100 people have been injured, mostly from smoke inhalation, but no fatalities have been reported. </s> Goodshoot/Thinkstock(JERUSALEM) — At least two people are dead after a fire broke out at a fireworks warehouse in central Israel Tuesday, according to Israeli police.

The blaze in the town of Porat spurred several explosions. Five others were injured and taken to nearby hospitals, Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld tweeted.

Rosenfeld added that the situation is now under control. </s> Israeli police have arrested nine people, including relatives of the Palestinian truck driver who rammed his vehicle into a crowd of Israeli soldiers at a Jerusalem tourist spot and killed four of them, officials said.

The five family members of Fadi Ahmad Hamdan al-Qunbar, 28, were arrested in a raid in the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood of East Jerusalem, where he lived, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

Qunbar killed three Israel Defense Forces cadets and an officer Sunday at the bustling Armon Hanatziv promenade in the Talpiot neighborhood before he was shot dead. Sixteen people were injured in the attack.

On Monday, Palestinians hurled rocks and incendiary devices at authorities as they placed concrete slabs to block entrances and check vehicles in the West Bank and Jerusalem. </s> Fires continue to rage across Israel. As of this writing, over 200 fires have been reported, thousands have been evacuated from their homes and many people have been hospitalized and treated for injuries. In Haifa close to 75,000 people were evacuated from their homes. On Friday, Nov. 25, new blazes broke out in the Jerusalem area.

A firefighting Supertanker is set to arrive in Israel from the US. The Boeing 747 Supertanker is considered the largest firefighter aircraft in the world. Countries from all over have sent planes and crews to help with the firefighting efforts.

The cause of the fires has not been ascertained, but Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh said Thursday, Nov. 24, that “several” individuals have been arrested on suspicion of arson. Shin Bet said the agency is investigating the possibility that several of the fires were nationalistically motivated terror attacks.

An Israeli village west of Jerusalem was evacuated due to fires raging on its margins, as some firefighting efforts were being diverted from Israel’s north to its center.

The flames nearing the village of Nataf were among three fires reported in the Jerusalem area Friday — the fourth day in which emergency services were battling multiple blazes across Israel, some of which were started by arsonist “terrorists,” according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Whereas fires were largely contained Friday in the northern city of Haifa, new blazes burned in the Jerusalem area — including a forest fire at Ma’aleh Hahamisha, which police traced back to a firebomb, and another fire at Mevo Horon in the West Bank.

On Friday, police arrested 13 people on suspicion of involvement in the fires, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told Army Radio.

Several people have been treated for smoke inhalation but no serious injuries have been reported due to the fires.

During a visit to Hazor Airbase south of Tel Aviv, Netanyahu said of the fire starters: “These are people who are very hostile to the State of Israel. We’re seeing them operating in small teams and who knows whether they intercommunicate, which they don’t necessarily need to be doing” to keep causing fires.

The fires have been fanned by hot, dry weather and high winds, but some — including in Zichron Ya’akov, near Haifa — were started by arsonists, the head of local firefighting force said following an investigation.

Netanyahu, who on Thursday vowed to punish arsonists, has accepted offers of assistance from the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan, who on Friday joined Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Russia and the United States in offering to help with firefighting equipment and personnel.

Egypt will send two helicopters, Jordan will send several trucks and the Palestinian Authority will dispatch four firefighting trucks as well.

Yona Yahav, the mayor of Haifa, which was one of the cities most heavily hit by the fires, said he was shocked to see the damage during a tour of the affected areas Friday.

“I had a difficult emotional experience,” he told Army Radio. “We take pride in how green our city is, but now everything is painted black.” Some 80,000 people were briefly evacuated from some neighborhoods of Haifa but they were allowed to return to their homes Friday.

Yahav added he had no information on the people who have been arrested on suspicion of arson, but wished to remind listeners that “there wasn’t a single Arab town in the country that didn’t contact me to offer its help.”

This is a developing story. The IJN incorporated reports from TPS and JNF into this story. </s> HAIFA, Israel -- A wildfire roared through parts of Israel's third-largest city Thursday, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes as the country's leaders raised the possibility that Arab assailants had intentionally set the blaze.

Spreading quickly in the dry, windy conditions, the fire raced through Haifa's northern neighborhoods, sending panicked residents fleeing.

While there were no serious injuries, several dozen people were hospitalized for smoke inhalation. In a rare move, Israel called up hundreds of military reservists to join overstretched police and firefighters and was making use of an international fleet of firefighting aircraft sent by several countries, including Russia and Turkey.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke Thursday morning with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who agreed to send two firefighting planes that could drop water on the blazes. Media outlets reported that a supertanker firefighting plane would arrive from the United States in 24 hours.

The Haifa blaze was the most serious in a series of fires that ignited across the country in recent days. On a visit to the area, Netanyahu said anyone implicated in setting the fires would be punished severely.

"It's a crime for all intents and purposes and in our opinion it is terror for all intents and purposes," he said.

Netanyahu did not elaborate on the identity or motives of the suspected arsonists, but Israeli officials typically use the term "terror" to refer to Arab or Palestinian militant activity.

Israel has been on edge during more than a year of Palestinian attacks, mostly stabbings, that have tapered off in recent months but not halted. Netanyahu has blamed Palestinian incitement for fueling those attacks.

Netanyahu's accusations could test already brittle relations between Israel's Jewish majority and its Arab minority, which has long suffered discrimination in Israel and says it has been slighted by rhetoric from Netanyahu and other Israeli officials in the past.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told Channel 10 TV news that eight people had been arrested and that authorities had found "flammable materials and liquids poured in certain areas," a find that pointed to arson. He said arson was suspected in about half of the fires.

Israeli media said the Shin Bet internal security agency was helping search for perpetrators, while Erdan said, "we need to be prepared for a new type of terror."

"It's safe to assume that whoever is setting the fires isn't doing it only out of pyromania," said Israel's police chief, Roni Alsheich. "It's safe to assume that if it is arson it is politically motivated."

Ayman Odeh, the head of a joint Arab bloc of parties in Israel's parliament and a Haifa native, appealed to Israelis to come together and abandon "politics" during the trying time.

"This is something that harms all of us. This is not a story of Arab or Jew. Whoever did this is an enemy of all of us," he told Israeli Channel 2 TV news.

The Palestinians meanwhile offered to send firefighting teams to help combat the flames, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA. Yousef Nassar, the director general of the Palestinian Civil Defense, said the offer of assistance was "a humanitarian message."

The Palestinians assisted Israel during a deadly wildfire in 2010. Israel's response to the offer was not immediately known.

The rash of fires is the worst since 2010, when Israel suffered the single deadliest wildfire in its history. That blaze burned out of control for four days, killed 42 people and was extinguished only after firefighting aircraft arrived from as far away as the United States.

Israel has strengthened its firefighting capabilities since then, buying special planes that can drop large quantities of water.

Several countries, including Russia, France, Cyprus, Turkey, Croatia, Greece and Italy also were sending assistance to battle this week's blazes.

Yael Hamer, a resident of Haifa who was evacuated from her home Thursday, told journalists that the situation now was worse than the fire six years ago, when the fire was contained to the forests next to Haifa.

"Now it is residential areas where there are many private homes. It is near schools, gas stations, and there are a lot of cars that are stuck in traffic jams as people try to leave Haifa," Hamer said.

Residents of eight neighborhoods were told to evacuate their homes Thursday afternoon, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Or Doron, a spokesman for the city of Haifa, said some 50,000 people had been evacuated.

Police and firefighters were deployed throughout the city, as people loaded up supermarket carts with belongings and fled their homes. Some people connected hoses together from apartment buildings to help battle the fires, while residents held cloths over their faces.

The military said it deployed two search-and-rescue battalions to assist civilian efforts. It also called up about 500 reserve soldiers to back up the police and fire departments.

Police said the blazes started early Tuesday at Neve Shalom, a community outside Jerusalem where Jews and Arabs live together. Fires later flared up elsewhere near Jerusalem and in the northern Israeli area of Zichron Yaakov.

Information for this article was contributed by Ruth Eglash of The Washington Post.
Four Palestinians have been arrested in connection to the fires.