Fire breaks out in office of left-wing Israeli NGO

A fire at the office of a left-wing Israeli NGO that documents Israeli human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories led to suspicions of arson, but was later attributed to a suspected electrical fault.

Fire department officials initially told Israeli media that the fire that broke out in the offices of B'Tselem on Sunday evening was likely an act of arson.

But the service said on Monday that indications showed the blaze was due to an electrical faulyt.

The fire started on the first floor, where the NGO's offices are located, and made its way up, the officials told the Israeli news site Ynet.

One person was taken to hospital after being lightly injured from smoke inhalation. The man was rescued from the fourth floor of the burning building by a team of firefighters.

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, a B'Tselem spokesperson told Ynet that the organisation was still waiting for confirmation of the source of the fire.

"If it does turn out that this was indeed arson, then it is a direct result of the wave of incitement against B'Tselem and the general public mood against the organisation nowadays," the spokesperson said.

"The damage to our offices will not stop our work of documenting and exposing the harm to human rights under the occupation," the group tweeted.

The following day, B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said the NGO was relieved that the fire was not an arson attack.

"The fire brigade made an official announcement to us and as far as we are concerned that is what we needed to hear," Michaeli told AFP on Monday.

"We are relieved and happy that this is what it was and are going to start cleaning up ASAP." 

Other Israeli left-wing groups initially believed that the fire was an arson attack, due to B'Tselem's line of work that reports on Israeli transgressions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"The arson at the B'Tselem office is an attempted attack that miraculously did not claim human lives, and the cabinet ministers, led by Netanyahu are responsible," anti-settlement NGO Peace Now stated, blaming right-wing incitement.

B'Tselem, an organisation that focuses on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, has been facing more intense criticism than usual from the Israeli right in recent days.

Activists associated with the group have been accused of providing the Palestinian Authority (PA) with names of Palestinians who sell their lands to Israeli settlers, an act that is technically punishable by death under Palestinian law. Such sentences are rarely carried out, however, and the PA has not executed anyone since 2005.

B'Tselem has defended one of the activists involved, saying in a Facebook post: "Nasser Nawajiya ... is a B'Tselem field operative in southern Har Hevron, but he is also a Palestinian from the village of Khirbet Susya ... When he found out about a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship who pretended to be a real estate salesperson and offered to sell land, part of which belonged to [Nawajiya's] family, he reported it to the Palestinian authorities.

"This is the only legitimate channel for a Palestinian, given that Israeli authorities do not defend Palestinian landowners in the area from settlers taking over their land," the group wrote.

Israelis have lashed out against B'Tselem in the aftermath, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even commented about it in a Facebook post.

The left-wing in Israel has shrunk in recent years, with the right-wing Likud party's candidate Netanyahu winning a landslide re-election victory in March.