Forest Arson in Israel Fans Flames of Conflict : Mideast: Attacks on the sparse woodlands, a weapon in the Arab uprising, stir anger--and concern that the revolt is hitting closer to home.

With the first drops of autumn rains, the season for raging fires in Israel’s sparse forests is coming to an end, and Israeli officials are relieved that this year’s damage, presumed to be caused by Palestinian arsonists, was less widespread than last year’s.

Forest arson is viewed as one of several indications that the Arab uprising is crossing into Israel. Although authorities seldom have conclusive evidence, they say that a radical Palestinian radio station broadcasting from Iraq has repeatedly urged forest arson as a tactic. Often, they add, people claiming to be acting as part of the Arab struggle against Israel telephone to claim responsibility for setting specific fires.

The most spectacular and damaging fire this year struck Carmel National Park, which lies along the undulating hills nudging the seashore within sight of the port city of Haifa. More than one-seventh of the 7,000-acre oak and pine forest was blackened last month by a wind-driven fire that lasted three days.

Witnesses saw some people set the fire, and anonymous callers said that the arsonists had acted from political motives.

Carmel Park is considered by Israelis to be something of an oasis, and there was intense shock that it should become an apparent casualty of the Arab uprising.

“Trees don’t hurt anybody,” said Salman abu Rukun, a caretaker at the forest and a member of Israel’s Druze community, an offshoot sect of Islam. “They (trees) don’t know politics.”

Israeli authorities estimate that about one-third of all forest fires are caused by arsonists.

Campfires and cigarettes cause another third, and the source of the rest is unknown. In all of Israel, about 15,000 acres were charred in the first nine months of 1989, compared to 30,000 during the same period last year.

Authorities attributed the drop-off to quicker response by firefighters, noting that the number of fires was almost the same both years.

But in Carmel Park, the arsonists chose carefully. It was a day when a strong, hot wind blew from the desert in the east. The wind drove the flames quickly across two steep valleys, sparing only a few stands of oak that proved more fire-resistant than the sap-filled pines.

The blaze set off an angry response in a way that the killings of humans on either side of the conflict rarely does. Israelis view trees as something of a national symbol; people plant trees to commemorate births and deaths.

“The hateful fire will be reignited in the hearts of many Israelis who may conclude, even against some contradictory evidence, that Palestinians are set on mindless destruction, not on peace. And that fire may also begin raging out of control,” the usually dovish Jerusalem Post warned.

Thousands of motorists streamed to the park in the days following the fire to mourn the destruction. It is a scene played out commonly when an intifada disaster hits inside Israel: The spot becomes an attraction. Last July, after an Arab assailant steered a passenger bus off the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway into a deep ravine, killing 16 passengers, thousands of passers-by stopped to look at the crushed bus.

When Israel, in fighting a human rights resolution critical of it at the United Nations, noted that no one was criticizing the Palestinians for burning trees, a representative from the Palestine Liberation Organization asked why trees should be especially protected when human lives are being lost to military gunfire in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Israeli tactics in coping with the Arab revolt have toughened. Once, troops were ordered to fire on demonstrators and stone throwers only if the soldiers’ lives were in danger. Now, soldiers may shoot at anyone who ignores an order to stop. Last week in Nablus, Palestinian witnesses charged that a soldier shot down a youth who had surrendered and then shot him again as he lay dying on the ground.

Housing demolitions continue on the grounds that a resident of the house has engaged in attacks on soldiers. Soldiers have uprooted olive groves owned by Arabs because the groves were deemed to harbor stone throwers. Soldiers are confiscating the personal belongings of residents in Beit Sahur because they refuse to pay taxes to the occupation authorities.

For their part, Palestinians are making arson of another sort endemic in Jerusalem. They are setting cars ablaze, either those belonging to Arabs suspected of betraying the Palestinian cause or Israelis who park their vehicle in or near Arab neighborhoods.

To Israelis, the burning of the Carmel forest was a crime of special note. The forest is home to animals chosen especially to re-establish the animal population said to have existed here in biblical times. Several rare wild goats and fallow sheep were killed in the blaze.

“Arab, Jew, Druze can all come here to enjoy this forest,” said ranger Abu Rukun. “People from the West Bank came here to picnic.”

Abu Rukun, whose Druze compatriots live in a minority status not only in Israel but in Lebanon and Syria, sees the world through the harmonious prism of country living. He has resided in the Carmel mountains for all his 42 years; his family has made its home in the Carmel village of Ussifye for four centuries. Israeli Druze, although considered Arabs, have generally peaceful relations with the Israeli government and often serve in the army.

Abu Rukun once attended a seminar in Canada and was so impressed by the U.S.-Canadian international peace park on the frontier that he suggested to colleagues from Jordan and Egypt that such a refuge be established on their borders with Israel.

He was surprised at their silence.

“I looked at this not as political but as a first step toward peace,” he said.

The caretaker estimates that it will take 30 years for the gash in the Carmel park to recover its former glory.

Abu Rukun, like his trees and much of the rest of Israel, has learned that no one can expect to be totally immune from the ills of the Arab uprising. He said that after the Carmel fire, a son, one of his five children, received a phone call from someone identifying himself as a member of the PLO.

“Tell me, is your father upset over the fire?” the caller asked, according to Abu Rukun’s account.

The boy answered yes.

“Good,” the caller continued. “With God’s help, we will also burn your father’s house down because your father works for the Israelis.”