Blazes billow across Israel-occupied lands for 4th day

Wildfires rage across Israel for a fourth straight day after a conflagration broke out in the northwestern city of Haifa, prompting tens of thousands of evacuations.

The blazes billowed in many locations throughout the Israeli-occupied territories on Friday. The fire in Haifa, the hardest hit city, has forced some 80,000 people to flee.

The fires are also still burning in the forests west of Jerusalem al-Quds, on central and northern hilltops and in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Police said hundreds of people were evacuated from the village of Beit Meir near Jerusalem al-Quds overnight. They also reported the outbreak of a new fire near the southern town of Kiryat Gat.

The Haifa mayor urged residents with water sprinklers to help put out the flames as thousands of residents of the mixed Jewish-Arab coastal city spent the night in temporary accommodation.

Authorities said the Haifa fires were "under control" on Friday morning, but cautioned that "things can change" as strong and changeable winds make developments hard to predict.

Since the blaze began engulfing Haifa, Israeli firefighters have been trying to tame as many as 200 fires, The Jerusalem Post reported. Entire neighborhoods of the port city have been evacuated, along with Haifa University and local prisons.

Authorities in Tel Aviv have sought foreign assistance to deal with the conflagration.

A lack of downpours together with very dry air and strong easterly winds contributed to the spread of the fires this week across the Israeli-occupied lands.

Meteorology “is conducive to the spread of these fires,” said Noah Wolfson, the chief executive of weather forecasting company Meteo-Tech. “The atmosphere will remain very dry, at least until Monday or Tuesday.”

Israeli officials, however, have pounced on the occasion to blame Arab or Palestinian “arsonists” for some of the blazes, calling them “terrorists.”

Israeli accusations come as the regime is under fire for its illegal settlement construction activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel’s Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who is a staunch supporter of the regime’s land grab, said on Twitter that “arsonists” were disloyal to Israel, hinting that “those who set the fires” could not be Israelis.

The claims angered the Fatah movement of President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, which said the regime in Tel Aviv is “exploiting the fire” to level new allegations against Palestinians.

“What is burning are our trees and our land of historical Palestine,” said the West Bank-based movement in a statement.

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