Har Ha’Tayassim, the “pilots’ mountain” is one of the most magnificent look-outs in the Jerusalem Hills, with glorious vistas west of the capital. It’s almost natural that the Israeli Air Force bagged it as their memorial site. On IDF Soldiers Remembrance days, fighter jets fly over in missing-man formation.
On Tuesday afternoon, there were plenty of pilots buzzing around the hilltop as fire-fighting planes circled overhead, ready to drop their loads on any lingering flames and spotter helicopters hovered, looking for any signs of the fire renewing. The lush, dense woods of ancient Katlav (Arbutus or strawberry trees), with their distinctive deep-red trunks, and the newer pines around the memorial had been reduced to grey ash and a few blackened stumps.
Forty-eight hours after Israel’s worst blaze since the Mount Carmel forest fires in 2010 started, the fire was nearly under control. Fire engines and pickup trucks continued to dart across the forest tracks, responding to any reports of a plume of smoke but, by evening, all local residents were allowed to return and the alert was called off. In public, fire brigade chiefs congratulated themselves for having managed to stop this blaze, which had consumed around three thousand acres of woodland, without any casualties and with only one home in the surrounding communities being badly damaged from fire. In private though, one of the officers admitted “we dodged a bullet on this one.”
The dry westerly winds and the topography of the hills had led to an erratic pattern of the blazes. Just one ridge away from Har Ha’Tayasim, barely two minutes driving time, the peaceful valley remained green and pastoral. Hikers were licking ice-cream at a roadside kiosk and amateur photographers taking pictures of the low-swooping planes. The fire had licked around at least six communities, destroying chicken coops, a winery and storage buildings. At one point, plans were being made to evacuate Hadassa hospital, at Jerusalem’s most south-westerly point. The teams on the ground and in the air had prevented anything worse happening. But only just.
In the Carmel blaze, a bus carrying officer cadets of the prison service which had been on the way to evacuate a nearby prison had been caught in the fire. Together with six firefighters and police officers who had tried to save them, forty four were killed. Over two hundred buildings in four communities on the Carmel were destroyed or badly damaged. The disaster led to a drastic overhauling of the Israel Fire and Rescue Services - new equipment was purchased, training improved and recruitment expanded.
But as with all disasters in Israel, after a while new disasters arrived and attention was diverted. There are currently only 2,100 full-time fire fighters and they are mainly trained in urban fires. A study carried out in 2013 in the Technion assessed Israel’s need at 10,000 fire fighters - and that was before rising temperatures made the eastern Mediterranean a fiery cauldron this summer.
Two thirds of the Israeli fire fighting forces were in the Jerusalem Hills this week. If another major fire had broken out, they would have been beyond breaking. At one point, Israel was asking Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, themselves facing massive blazes this summer, to send reinforcements. In the end there was no need. Next time we may be less fortunate.
It’s not just the levels of personnel. Another lesson from the Carmel fire was the need for a squadron of fire fighting aircraft which would be tasked to do just that. Before 2010, the responsibility was split between the IAF, which used its large transport helicopters, and private crop duster companies. But the IAF stopped the mission when the elderly CH-53 helicopters couldn’t take the strain and the crop-dusters carried too small a load.
After the Carmel fire, fourteen aircraft were purchased but the IAF, which was tasked with setting up the new squadron, was reluctant to continue operating such a civilian mission. They were transferred first to the Fire Service, which had no experience of aerial operations, and then to the police’s aviation unit, which seemed to be the best place for it, together with the helicopters used for traffic control and crime prevention. This week, there simply weren’t enough of the aircraft and, once again, the IAF was drafted in to drop massive pallets of fire-retardant from their C-130 Hercules transports. They came too late to save their memorial site.
One tired police officer observed that “the IAF like to say they’re the best air-force in the world. Maybe they’re right, but that’s easier to do when you get to choose your missions. The rest of us don’t have that luxury.”
The rapid collapse of the government in Afghanistan and the scenes of chaos in and around Kabul Airport as the United States and other western nations rushed to evacuate their nationals and Afghan employees out of the city which had been overtaken by Taliban, has no direct connection to Israel. Two thousand miles separate Jerusalem and Kabul and this is one part of the world where Israel has never had any involvement.
But as a country which has a strategic ally and in many ways relies on American support as well, what looked to many like a display of strategic weakness from the Biden administration, was not encouraging. Especially with President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett set to have their first meeting in the White House in just a week’s time.
In the wake of the Afghan debacle, it is clear that the US has no appetite for foreign adventures in the foreseeable future. That is a concern for Israel which hopes that the US will retain both its small presence on the ground in northern Syria and the air and naval forces it has facing Iran in the Gulf. There are even closer sources of concern, however.
As one failed state falls into the hands of a radical Islamic movement, Israel is encircled by failed states in various degrees of similar danger. The most immediate concern is on Israel’s northern border, in Lebanon, where the political and financial turmoil deepened this week with increasing shortages of petrol, the explosion of a tanker and fire in a power-plant.
Iran’s main proxy, Hezbollah, is the most powerful military force currently in Lebanon, dwarfing the Lebanese Army in size and fire-power. It is also the most potent military threat to Israel, with an arsenal of 130 thousand rockets of various ranges. Last week Hezbollah launched 19 of those rockets on northern Israel. Some were intercepted by Iron Dome and others fell in open spaces.
Hezbollah’s attack was in retaliation for IAF strikes on a road in Lebanon which had been used by an unidentified Palestinian faction to fire three rockets of its own two days previously — one of which fell just a hundred meters from a shopping centre and tennis courts in Kiryat Shmona.
In this case, Israel decided to de-escalate, responding to the Hezbollah attack only with a salvo of artillery shells to open fields near the launch site, long after Hezbollah’s fighters had left the area.
“Israel doesn’t want a war,” said a senior IDF officer this week. “It will happen only if Hezbollah drag us into one. The next operational incident will happen perhaps tomorrow or in another month — and an escalation could take place quickly. If we are dragged in, we will be unapologetic in our actions.”
Israel has detailed intelligence of the locations of Hezbollah’s rockets, within the villages of South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, and has continuously warned that it won’t be held responsible for the damage and civilian casualties if it has to take those rockets out.
The Israeli assessment is that Hezbollah is focused internally at the moment and is not interested in a war either, although it is testing the boundaries. Events in Afghanistan could possibly embolden it.
International pressure on Hezbollah to enforce United Nations Resolution 1701 and remove their military infrastructure from South Lebanon has been weak and ineffectual so far. Neither has western involvement, particularly from France, to try to prop up a functioning Lebanese government come to anything so far.
“Everyone in the region is looking at the pictures from Kabul,” said the officer. “
“I’m very worried that what they’re thinking in Lebanon is that the West isn’t prepared to do anything to help them.”
There is some optimism within the Israeli intelligence community that within Lebanon, pro-democracy forces are beginning to work together.
Anger is mounting against Hezbollah which is seen as one of the sources of corruption in the country. This could curb its actions.
After last week’s rocket launch on Israel, local Druze villagers attacked the Hezbollah members and there was a half-hearted attempt by the Lebanese Army to confiscate the launcher. But the events in Kabul could hinder such developments. “One of the things dividing the camps in Lebanon is their international alignment.
“If the anti-Iran elements get help, both financially from Sunni Arab states and from western NGOs who could help fighting corruption and next year work on monitoring the Lebanese election, it could have a real effect,” says on Israeli analyst.
“The scenes from Afghanistan certainly strengthen the hand of those aligned with Iran who say that America and the West can’t be trusted.
