jerusalem | Israeli officials have come under sharp criticism for their handling of the country’s deadliest forest fire ever, prompting critics to ask whether the nation’s leaders can cope with more serious challenges, like rocket attacks and a nuclear-armed Iran.
Israelis were riveted to the round-the-clock coverage of the blaze, which included images of bumbling leaders and overwhelmed rescuers turning to the outside world for help.
As the blaze roared, Israelis were asking why the country wasn’t better prepared for a wildfire of such magnitude. In all, 42 people were killed, about 250 homes were destroyed or severely damaged, 17,000 people were forced to evacuate, more than 12,000 acres were burned and an estimated 5 million trees were lost.
“The Carmel disaster highlights the outrageous gaps in Israel’s strategic and day-to-day readiness,” the Israeli daily Ha’aretz wrote in an editorial that called for a state commission of inquiry into whom should be blamed for the failures of the Israeli fire service.
Some 30 firefighting aircraft and three helicopters — which arrived from the United States, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Britain, Russia, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Azerbaijan, Spain, Romania, Holland and Canada — helped fight the fire, according to Ynetnews.
Israel also rented the American Evergreen Boeing 747 Super Tanker, the world’s largest aerial firefighting plane with a capacity to hold 20,000 gallons of water and fire retardants.
Ynetnews reported Dec. 5 that Israel was paying a heavy price — some $200,000 an hour — for failing to purchase its own firefighting planes throughout the years. Israel does not have a single firefighting aircraft of its own, and it ran out of flame retardants on the first day of the blaze.
“What’s better to spend the State of Israel’s money on, firefighting aircraft or an F-15 fighter jet?” wrote Eitan Haber, a former Rabin administration official and now a columnist for Ynetnews.
On Dec. 8, Israel Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss released a report that said the country’s fire fighting services are woefully inadequate. The report, prepared even before the inferno, pointed to shortages in firefighting manpower, equipment and stations that will take nearly $200 million to fix. Lindenstrauss accused the government of “foot dragging” and “ongoing failure” to address repeated warnings.
Just four years after a devastating war against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, in which the civil defense system was caught off guard by waves of rocket fire, Israel still appears ill-prepared to handle disaster.
“We are entitled to expect of our governments not to be smart only after the fact but — at least once — to be smart before disaster strikes,” Nahum Barnea, the nation’s pre-eminent newspaper columnist, wrote in the Yediot Achronot daily. “That hasn’t happened because we have no national leadership here that is capable of rising above the immediate problems.”
Israeli media pointed fingers at a number of officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Eli Yishai, a politician from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party whose office oversees fire services. Yishai made a handy target because his party is widely despised by Israel’s secular Jewish majority. Yishai also was accused of refusing fire truck donations from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
Yishai said his ministry was not funded well enough to purchase needed equipment. In 2001, he noted, Ariel Sharon’s government voted to eliminate air support for fire fighting, and told Israel Radio that he was a target because of his Sephardic heritage.
Israel has 16 firefighters per 100,000 residents; by contrast, the United States, Japan and Greece have five to seven times that number per capita. In total, Israel has 1,400 firefighters.
Still, there was little expectation heads would roll, a prospect likely to add to the lack of confidence in the leadership.
With national leaders routinely describing Iran — which Israel and the U.S. believe is trying to develop nuclear weapons — as the country’s greatest threat, Ma’ariv columnist Ben Caspit asked how Israel could conceive of attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, “an act liable to lead to a war of missiles on an enormous scale never seen before in the world, without even giving a shred of consideration to Israel’s ability to put out fires?”
Throughout the crisis and its aftermath, Netanyahu has been in damage-control mode. Over Shabbat, when his office is usually silent, the prime minister’s staff bombarded reporters with 35 text messages informing them of his every move and meeting.
Netanyahu says Israel now will form an airborne firefighting force. He also has vowed to quickly compensate victims and revive the area.
“I do not want delays. I do not want bureaucracy,” he said. “I want quick solutions.”
And even before the fire was put out, officials were talking of forming an official commission of inquiry — like the investigation that led to a slew of high-profile resignations after the 2006 Lebanon war.
Marcy Oster of JTA and Ynetnews contributed to this report.