Some 650 acres of the KKL-JNF-managed public forests had been burned by kites or balloons as of Sunday night, Ben-David told the Post.KKL-JNF has deployed lookouts and firefighters who have been working day and night for the past two months to put out the fires, together with the district’s firefighters and in cooperation with the IDF.According to Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, a total of some 600 kites have been launched from Gaza, destroying over 220 acres of agricultural land and forests in southern Israel and causing 198 fires. The fires in both the forests and on agricultural land have killed animals and caused ecological damage and pollution, Ben-David says. But with agricultural land, while the farmers may be immediately harmed economically, they can plow and plant it anew; after the next rain their crops should hopefully begin to grow again.“The damage we have absorbed in the forests is large and in order to return to what it was, it will take some 15-20 years with a lot of work,” Ben David noted.“First we will need to let the coming winter pass, to see what revives by itself, which trees we can save and which have no chance... And then we’ll have to think about how to continue,” he said, mentioning the planting of new trees, sanitation and solutions for soil erosion, which he said will cost millions of shekels.KKL-JNF, the IDF, the firefighters and the communities are all working hard to react as quickly as possible to the fires, but are lacking a strategy to prevent them. They are gathering their wheat as fast as they can before it gets burned.Moreover, at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, the farmers are employing their tractors to race to the scene of the fires to create rings of overturned soil around the wheat to limit the fire’s reach. Once the fire hits the soil, it will be extinguished, explained Kibbutz Nahal Oz's supervisor of irrigation Daniel Rahamim to the Post, while standing on a black carpet of burned wheat.Nahal Oz has already lost more than 250 acres of wheat to the fires, Rahamim said. “It’s really hard – we work here for months to grow the wheat, we put a lot of work into it and within a few minutes the land is burned,” he lamented.The farmers will receive compensation for the damage done to their land, since the state recognizes the kite launches as terror attacks.It’s not only the wheat that has been destroyed but also the irrigation lines. “When the taps are burned, we can’t water the potatoes until they are fixed... so they are also harmed,” Rahamim noted.“It’s not easy, but we have strength and it won’t break us,’ he remarked. “We know we are here because this is our mission – to raise children here and live our lives. It is our home and we won’t give up.”The fields of Nahal Oz are so close to the Gaza Strip that you can clearly see rows of apartments across the border. Rahamim, who is 64, used to be friends with Gazans when the border was open. Some of them even came to his wedding. But he said that over the years they lost touch.Both Rahamim and Shachar-Epstein say that they feel like a new full-blown conflict with Gaza is approaching, having learned from experience that these dribs and drabs of violence usually lead to a large-scale IDF operation in Gaza.Rahamim is a member of a group called the “Movement for the future of the western Negev” which is trying to avoid another war by putting pressure on politicians to find a non-violent solution. Rahamin believes that a regional council is needed including moderate Arab states as well as the EU, US and Russia to put pressure of Hamas to reach a solution. “The Arab states – the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Saudis – they are the ones who can influence Hamas,” he opined.“Otherwise it’s a type of loop: they attack and we react and they react and we react and it doesn’t end,” he said.Daniel Ben-David, KKL-JNF’s man in the western Negev area took me through Beeri forest to see the damage done by fire kites pic.twitter.com/Xh3mhgrpkK
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