by Nikki Guttman and Israel Hayom Staff
One-third of Karmiya Nature Reserve destroyed, damage to local flora and fauna will take years to repair • IDF said to be working on drone countermeasures.
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The fire in the
Karmiya Nature Reserve, Saturday
Photo: Nir Tzafrir
Palestinian kite terrorism
took a heavy toll on the communities adjacent to the Israel-Gaza Strip
border over the weekend, as some 40 fires reduced hundreds of acres
of farmland and vegetation into ash.
Palestinian rioters sent dozens of
incendiary kites over the border on Friday and Saturday, and hundreds
of firefighters battled the flames for hours each day.
Israel Fire and Rescue Services said that
so far, the Palestinians' "kite campaign," launched in late April, has
sparked 350 fires that have eradicated nearly 7,000 acres of forest
and agricultural land on the Israeli side of the border, affecting
every community near the security fence.
Firefighters from all districts have been deployed to the Gaza vicinity to help local teams battle the blazes.
The largest fire this weekend destroyed a
significant part of the Karmiya Nature Reserve, the Israel Nature and
Parks Authority reported Saturday.
The INPA said around one-third of the reserve – 75 acres of the
275-acre park – has been reduced to ash, causing untold devastation.
Flames raged for hours, fueled by the dry
weather conditions. "At first, we couldn't use firefighting aircraft –
they would be flying close to the Gaza border and the military forbade
it," said INPA inspector Kobi Sofer.
He said rehabilitating the damage caused to the area's flora and fauna would take years.
Rafi Babian
Dozens of greenhouses and fields in the
communities near the border sustained fire damage over the weekend as
well and local farmers said that at this point, the damage amounted to
tens of millions of shekels.
Kibbutz Kissufim spokesman Benny Hasson
told Israel Hayom that "the government isn't protecting us. We've come
to the point where we have no control over our daily routine – they
[the Palestinians] control it. The fires enveloping the kibbutz have
caused significant financial damage. The State of Israel has not
imposed enough sanctions on the other side to make it stop."
Commenting on a suggestion made by the
heads of some of the Gaza-vicinity communities, to hire Gazan to work
in their fields so as to mitigate their dire economic situation, Hasson
said, "How am I supposed to trust people who burn my fields,
vandalize their side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, through which vital
goods are delivered, and open fire on the Karni crossing, used by
Palestinian patients to travel to hospitals?"
Ofer Lieberman, who oversees field crops at
Kibbutz Nir Am, said the residents and farmers "are helpless against
this phenomenon. We try to minimize the damage caused by the fires, but
it's just crazy. It's not just farmland that's being destroyed is the
vegetation around us. I hope the state will compensate us for both
direct and indirect damages."
Danny Ben David, head of the Western Negev
Region at the Jewish National Fund, said, "We carry out daily
assessments of the damage and it's very frustrating because we have no
idea when this [kite campaign] will end, or how. Each one [kite]
causes hundreds of thousands of shekels in damages and we deal with
dozens of them every day."
The military said it was working on countermeasures against the incendiary kites, with one official saying that drone technology is tested daily against them.
"We have the ability to tangle the kites'
lines and bring them down where they can't cause any damage," Col.
Nadav Livneh, head of the IDF's Testing and Quality Assurance Unit,
which is part of the GOC Army Headquarters' Technology Division, told
Channel 12.
"When you think of the financial issue,
it's not just about the damage to the fields, it's about the trauma
caused to the residents of the border-adjacent communities. If there is
anything we can do to minimize this damage, we'll do it," he said.
Nikki Guttman and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/06/03/%e2%80%8e40-fires-erupt-as-gaza-terrorists-launch-incendiary-kites-at-%e2%80%8eisrael-%e2%80%8e/
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