Interior Minister Aryeh Deri (Shas) on Monday instructed Population and Immigration Authority Director-General Prof. Shlomo Mor Yosef, to allow residents whose homes were burned down in the recent wave of fires to receive new documents for free.
"Anyone whose house was burned and documents of the Interior Ministry were also burned, will have to report it and the documents will be issued free of charge for him," he said.
Between Thursday and Saturday, firefighting teams extinguished 1,023 fires, caused by electrical issues, Lag Ba'omer bonfires - and arson.
The fires destroyed at least fifty homes, as well as nearly 2,000 acres of forest. The fire in Mevo Modi'im, the community hit hardest by the flames, is believed to have been caused by arson.
Over 1,000 firefighters battled the blazes throughout the country, as did Israel’s 12 firefighting planes from five other countries identified as Egypt, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, and Italy. Four Palestinian Authority firefighting companies also assisted.
Three Jerusalem Arabs were arrested for involvement in arson, after two of them helped set fires near the city's Mount Scopus neighborhood and the third in the Kidron Valley.