Children’s kites from Gaza: The latest pretext for Israel’s threats

In Israeli towns that suffered Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, anything coming from Gaza causes alarm. Even, as in recent weeks, children’s kites. Between the kibbutzim of Beeri and Nahal Oz, less than a mile from the Strip, about a dozen have fallen to the ground in the past month, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government sees a Hamas scheme to test its limits. On Sunday, it threatened to kill those responsible and even to forcibly evict residents from areas where kites are launched. Four days later, the Gaza Peace Board (the body chaired by Donald Trump that oversees implementation of the Gaza truce) sided again with Israel’s position and called for an end to “all militant activity” in the Palestinian enclave, “including kite flying.” Since then, footage has circulated from Gaza showing adults angrily destroying kites or children crying because they can no longer fly them. The popular committees (which run shelters and displaced persons camps in the Strip) urged parents to prevent their children from playing with kites “in order to protect their innocent lives.”

The popular committees, made up of representatives from local NGOs and charities, said on Monday that they do not intend “to restrict childhoods in which the most basic rights to play and live safely have already been taken away,” but felt compelled to do “everything possible to prevent” children from flying kites.

The committees coordinated the announcement with Hamas authorities, whose spokesman Hazem Qassem accused Netanyahu of finding a new “excuse” to continue bombing, as he did during the 10 months before the ceasefire. They are just “toys for children in the refugee camps” and the Islamist movement has nothing to do with their landing in Israel, he said.

On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned he would act “forcefully” and apply a “zero tolerance” policy toward the phenomenon, treating kites the same as drones, “whether or not they carry explosives.” Israel gave 72 hours for the launching of kites across the border to stop. A day later, Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN human rights office, criticized the Israeli leaders’ “unacceptable rhetoric” and called the threat to forcibly displace populations over kites “outrageous.”

But within defenseless, shattered Gaza, the UN condemnation has done little to ease the fear, visible in social media videos and in statements to local journalists (Israel has prevented the international press from freely accessing Gaza for nearly three years). Some videos show people angrily disposing of kites or mocking Israel’s new object of fear. In one video, two men tear apart kites bearing the colors of the Palestinian flag while saying: “This is so Netanyahu can rest easy, knowing that we’re attacking our children ourselves.” In another video, a child bursts into tears as he furiously rips up a kite: “They want to take away what we love […] To please Netanyahu? [defense minister, Israel] Katz? Trump?”

Fear

There are also those who will keep flying their kites, like young Omar Halawa. “I heard a few days ago that Israel has banned kites because it fears them. But we don’t want to do anything with them — we just fly them to calm ourselves down,” he said. “I’m afraid that tomorrow they’ll ban them from playing soccer. Or swimming [in the sea]. These are their most basic rights,” added his mother, Yasmin, with greater indignation.

In Israel, by contrast, nothing about the phenomenon is seen as childish or innocent. Above all, because of precedent. In 2018, Gaza launched the Great March of Return, a protest movement demanding an end to the Israeli blockade and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. During the demonstrations, Israeli soldiers opened fire on those who approached the border fence and on those they deemed “instigators,” causing 214 deaths and up to 36,000 gunshot injuries over a year and a half.

As part of the Great March, and after Israel’s defensive technology had further reduced the danger from rockets and mortar rounds, some Palestinians (and later militias) used the Mediterranean wind to send kites and balloons carrying incendiary devices into Israel. They caused no fatalities but sparked hundreds of fires in agricultural areas.

Dani Rahamim, 72, is the spokesman for Nahal Oz and remembers both those days and Hamas’s 2023 attack, when gunmen killed 15 civilians and took eight hostages in his kibbutz. It was not one of the hardest-hit places because there were about 10 Israeli soldiers inside, unlike Nir Oz, Beeri, and especially the nearby Nova festival, where troops took hours to arrive and the worst massacres occurred.

The combination of the 2018 precedent and Hamas’s attack leads him to view the kites as a challenge Israel must answer with force, even though far fewer are now arriving and none carry explosives. “It began that way back then […] The army knows how to reach those who give the orders to those children. Even if it isn’t dangerous today, that is when you must act, because the danger will come tomorrow. So, before it arrives, you have to cut it off at the root. And the Israeli army knows how to do that,” he says. “Before October 7, 2023, I would have asked why harm them. Now I think they must be killed. Because today they may not be doing anything, but they are preparing to kill me tomorrow.”

Rahamim reports five kites in the kibbutz and the surrounding area in the past month. Israeli media estimate about 10 in August. Channel 12 says nine were “launched” in June against troops in the Gaza area they occupy, but the army chose not to respond. Asked by this newspaper, the Israeli army refused to provide figures or say whether it believes Hamas is ordering Gazan children to launch them, as anonymous official sources have suggested. There is also speculation that this is a way to test the waters for launching drones controlled by fiber-optic cables against troops, as Hezbollah has done in southern Lebanon.

The Gaza Peace Board conveyed to Hamas the message that the kite activity must stop. The Islamist movement (already upset with the body for reinterpreting the disarmament agreement they had agreed to, to adapt it to Netanyahu’s maximalist demands) now accuses it of “brazen behavior.” “Is it even conceivable that attempts to appease the war criminal Netanyahu have reached the point of presenting the activities of innocent children as armed operations, at a time when he continues his daily killings and destruction despite the agreement?” one of its leaders, Basem Naim, criticized.

The issue reflects how Israel has shifted its security approach since the Hamas attack to a more aggressive, expansionist stance, occupying more territory than at any time in four decades. It keeps troops indefinitely inside Gaza and Lebanon and has taken more ground in Syria. With elections in two months, politicians are also competing to project toughness and inflexibility on any issue that could affect Israel’s security, even if it concerns kites.

The stance resonates with public sentiment and with the experiences of communities around Gaza. “On October 7 we lost trust not in the army, which is us, but in its commanders and those who command them,” says Eyal (who preferred not to give his surname) at the Eshkol community center, also near Gaza. “And that is hard to recover. I still don’t feel 100% safe. I’m not afraid now, nor do I think we should bomb anyone over kites, but the fear here is that it’s a sign Hamas is reorganizing.”

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