For many Palestinians in Gaza, the fear that a kite flown by a child could bring an attack on their neighbourhood is now a primary concern after Israel threatened to launch attacks if the toys crossed the border.
Marwan Al Harazeen, 55, a resident of the northern Gaza city who was displaced to Deir Al Balah in the centre, said children regularly flew kites in the area around his tent, but their parents should now stop them.
“We need to take any Israeli threat seriously because they just need any justification for their attacks,” Mr Al Harazeen told The National.
The warning came after at least four kites from Gaza were reported to have landed in the Nahal Oz kibbutz near the border at the weekend.
The Israeli army found nothing suspicious on the kites and said they posed no danger, The Times of Israel reported, but it recalled a campaign of attacks from Gaza using incendiary kites and balloons that caused wildfires in Israel between 2018 and 2021.
Gazans began releasing kites and balloons carrying burning materials in 2018, during protests along the border known as the Great March of Return, but that was very different to what is happening now, said Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian political analyst,
"It is true that these kites were used during the Great March of Return and the protests aimed at breaking the blockade, but at that time they carried incendiary materials that caused fires in fields on the Israeli side,” Mr Abusada told The National.
“Now, however, they are simply kites.”
Defence Minister Israel Katz had said on Monday that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had instructed the military to adopt a policy of “zero-tolerance and zero-containment toward the launching of kites and balloons from Gaza toward the Negev settlements”.
“If the launches continue, powerful actions will be taken to put an end to the phenomenon,” Mr Katz wrote on X. “A balloon and a kite shall be treated the same as a drone – with or without explosives."
Mr Abusada said Israel could seek to draw parallels with those attacks to justify stronger military measures in Gaza, despite the US-brokered ceasefire with Hamas that began in October last year.
Mr Netanyahu could also seek to use the issue domestically with Israeli elections approaching after he failed to achieve his declared goal of eliminating Hamas in response to the group’s attacks on October 7, 2023, which started the war, Mr Abusada said.
Unhappy with a new US-backed plan to disarm Hamas and end Israel’s military presence in Gaza, Mr Netanyahu “wants to achieve what they call absolute victory and accomplish the objectives of the war”, added the expert.
Nevertheless, Palestinian should recognise the potential consequences and try to prevent the kite issue from becoming a cause of escalation, Mr Abusada said.
“The issue could perhaps be contained at the community level, with families preventing their children from flying kites,” he suggested. “People are already in an extremely difficult situation and can’t withstand another escalation triggered simply because a child flew a kite.”
