There is no room to blame the Arab public for the wave of arson. The Joint Arab List MKs expressed disgust; Arab residents were willing to help; and the Palestinian Authority offered its equipment to assist the firefighters. There is no room here for incitement. But, at the same time, I suggest that the police and the Shin Bet security agency step outside of their conceptual boxes and avoid looking at the fires as another chapter in the book of the stabbing intifada. Yes, the stabbing attacks were fed by online incitement and by the decisions of individuals -- each person on their own -- to wield a knife and injure a Jew. There are certain similarities to this in the fires. The police and the Shin Bet seem satisfied with this, and, from the range of investigations into suspects who are Arab-Israelis, illegal Palestinians and Palestinians in the territories, they have concluded that this time too, there was no centralized command. At this point, they would be wise to "do some thinking" and to review things from the opposite perspective -- since organizing arson requires more time and planning than an individual's spontaneous decision to take a knife from his kitchen and set out to murder; and since more than one terrorist takes part in the act and the materials are not as readily available. If they managed to get organized so quickly that it was only a matter of hours between incidents, we must suspect, or at least look into, the possibility that this may have been prepared in advance with briefings from a central official (if not on a national level, then on a regional one. There were incidents like this as early as 1947, before regular armies joined the war). The police and the Shin Bet would rather think of this as the actions of individuals. After all, if it were to be otherwise, people would ask why they were asleep at the switch. So many Arabs involved in the preparations and the Israeli security forces didn't know about it? This is "ostrich" policy. But it is more important to take look at the reality to prevent future arson than it is to avoid the temporary unpleasantness of such questions. The police and Shin Bet chiefs are duty-bound to clarify the facts.
