Israel Warns Gaza Over Kite Flights
PHOTO CAPTION: Palestinians make a kite at a tent camp sheltering displaced people in Gaza City, August 25, 2026. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
CAIRO, Aug. 25 — Parents in Gaza have been urged to stop their children from flying kites after Israel threatened a forceful response if Hamas revives a tactic of sending incendiary kites across the border.
Popular committees representing local non-governmental organizations and charities that operate displacement camps and shelters issued the warning late Monday. A Hamas source said the announcement was coordinated with authorities in the enclave.
“We are working tirelessly on the ground and doing everything possible to stop this practice, not to restrict the childhood of our children, who have already been deprived of the most basic rights to play and live in safety, but to protect their innocent lives,” the committees said.
In 2018, Palestinians in Gaza launched incendiary balloons and kites across the border, setting fires across hundreds of acres of fields and farmland. Participants said at the time that the tactic was a protest against Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled enclave.
Recent kites alarm Israeli communities
Over the past month, several kites have drifted from Gaza into Israel. They were not reported to be carrying incendiary material, but their appearance alarmed residents of nearby Israeli communities that were attacked during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, assault that triggered the Gaza war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas on Sunday that unless the launches stopped immediately, “those responsible” for sending kites, balloons or drones toward Israel would be targeted for assassination and areas from which they were launched would be ordered evacuated.
Umm Mohammed, a mother in Gaza City who spoke to Reuters through a chat application, said the warning had changed how she viewed a pastime her 10-year-old son Ahmed had enjoyed every summer.
“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.
A senior Israeli defense official accused Hamas of trying to provoke Israel by encouraging residents to fly kites across the border.
A Hamas official rejected that allegation and told Reuters the group had complained to ceasefire mediators that “Israel was making fake pretexts to continue the war on Gaza.”
Israel has also complained about the kites to President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which oversees implementation of the 2025 Gaza ceasefire agreement, according to a second Israeli official.
(Source: Reuters)
