The residents of Kibbutz Revivim in the Negev desert in southern Israel, half an hour south of Beer Sheva, woke up early Thursday morning to the sight of yet another arson of their hayloft, with an estimated financial damage of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Late Prime Minister Golda Meir was Revivim’s most renowned celebrity. Her daughter Sara was a kibbutz member and her mother spent weekends in an apartment the kibbutz had given her after her retirement from political life.
This is not the first time that the hayloft has been ignited in recent years, with the traces of previous arsons leading directly to Bir Hadaj, a nearby Bedouin village that was built illegally on Jewish privately owned land, Regavim reported.
In the past week, officers of the Green Patrol, a.k.a. the National Unit for Supervision of Open Spaces—an enforcement unit of the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority—filed demolition orders against illegal structures in Bir Hadaj. Sources inside the kibbutz estimate that the arson was a “price tag” punishment to the nearest Jewish enclave, as Bedouin revenge against law enforcement.
Regavim issued a statement Thursday, saying, “The huge flames that lit up Kibbutz Revivim last night are a huge warning sign against the lack of enforcement and lack of governance. Israel police must wake up.”