AP Photo/Ariel Schalit Israeli firefighters work in Haifa, Israel, Friday, November 25, 2016. T he wildfires have finally died out. The fires in Israel began early last week and were only extinguished early this week. They spread into the well-off neighborhoods of Haifa, the ones close to the forests and far from the port, and destroyed hundreds of apartments. They swept through the hills west of Jerusalem. Even in places far from the flames, the smell of smoke mixed with the smell of dust in the dry wind blowing day after day from the desert. Remarkably, no one died. The last Israeli fire disaster, also in forests near Haifa, took 44 lives in 2010. Yet the fires this time blackened nearly as much land and cut deeper into built-up areas. Immediately, inevitably, fire became a subplot in Israeli-Palestinian politics. Evidence suggested arson in several blazes. Police arrested Palestinian suspects. Right-wing Israeli politicians seized on the incidents. “Only someone to whom the land...
