Israel threatens to shoot down Gaza kites, treating them as drone threats despite no evidence of explosives

Israel has threatened to shoot down kites sent across its border from Gaza, saying they will be treated “the same as a drone” despite admitting there is no evidence they contain explosives.

Over the past month, several kites have been spotted drifting from Gaza into Israel, sparking alarm in Israeli villages that were attacked by Hamas during the October 7, 2023 assault.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday warned that those responsible for launching the kites would become targets of assassination unless they were halted immediately. The areas that the kites were launched from would also be asked to evacuate, he said.

His warning came on the same day that an Israeli air strike killed three Palestinians on central Gaza on Sunday, including a four-year-old child.

Defence minister Israel Katz said on Monday that any kites or balloons crossing into Israeli territory would be treated as a potential security threat.

“A balloon and a kite shall be treated the same as a drone — with or without explosives,” he said in a statement.

Hamas has accused Israel of using the row to justify further attacks and threats against Palestinians.

“These threats, based on fabricated pretexts, are an attempt to justify the continuation of the aggression and violations against our people, ultimately threatening children in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas spokesman, Hazem Qassem said.

While Israeli authorities have voiced concern that the paper kites could carry explosives across the border, military inspections of four kites recovered in the area earlier this week found that they did not contain dangerous material, according to theTimes of Israel.

Qassem called on the Trump administration and the Gaza Board of Peace to pressure Israel to stop what he described as continued aggression against civilians.

In Israel however, officials have continued to treat the kites as airborne security threats.

Speaking on a visit to Nir Oz, one of the communities targeted in the October 7 attacks, Israeli president Isaac Herzog said the country “cannot underestimate any sign or any concern from border residents”.

“Residents no longer need to stand in front of the border and ask themselves the meaning of everything that flies in the sky. This is the responsibility of the state. To see, to know, to prevent, and to defend,” he said.

“It is also the responsibility of the international community, the member countries of the Board of Peace, to internalise and understand this principle.”

In 2018, incendiary balloons and kites sent over the border caused fires across hundreds of acres of open fields and farmlands, in what Gazans said was in protest at the Israeli blockade of the Hamas-controlled enclave.

The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSPR) has expressed concern over Israel’s targeting of kites, saying it is “an attempt to manufacture a political and military pretext” to facilitate a “return to genocidal war and forced displacement.”

Gazans say that the kite flying remains one of the few pastimes left for children in the enclave’s sprawling, overcrowded displacement camps. Much of the enclave was reduced to rubble during Israel’s war in Gaza.

Umm Mohammed, a ​mother from Gaza City, told Reuters that she was worried her son could be hurt.

"Every summer, my kid, Ahmed, 10, and the kids in the street fly those ​kites to entertain themselves, but I will not allow him to, not anymore," ​she said.