‘Outrageous’: UN slams threats from Netanyahu, Katz to evacuate Gazans over ‘children’s kites’
Israel believes the kites are being organized by Hamas, which previously used them as incendiary devices carrying flammable materials and explosives
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GENEVA, Switzerland — The United Nations on Tuesday slammed Israel’s threat to evacuate people from areas where kites, drones and balloons are launched in Gaza, lamenting “unacceptable rhetoric” coming from Israeli leaders.
“On the threat of expulsion due to children’s kite flying, I hope we can all agree that this is outrageous,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.
Israel warned Hamas on Sunday that it would step up operations in Gaza if launches of kites, drones and balloons toward Israel continued, after a recent increase in such incidents. Hamas has denied responsibility.
The Israeli military believes Hamas was behind the launches, which did not carry explosives and may have been testing how Israel would respond.
The incidents have revived memories of waves of kites and balloons launched from Gaza in previous years, notably in 2018-21, some of which sparked massive fires in southern Israel.
In those incidents, burning material was attached to kite tails or to clusters of helium balloons, and some carried small explosive charges, including devices that detonated on handling,
Four kites were found in communities near the Gaza border on Saturday and one was shot down by the army on Sunday, bringing the total number recovered in recent days to around 10.
On Monday, Channel 12 reported that nine kites were launched from the Gaza Strip toward IDF troops in June, but the incidents were neither publicly reported at the time nor met with an Israeli response.
“Israel warns Hamas that if the launches toward Israel do not stop immediately, the IDF will act to intensify strikes against those responsible for the launches and evacuate populations from areas from which kites, drones and balloons are launched,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday in a joint statement.
Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, claimed in a statement that the kites were “launched from Gaza by children searching for their innocent childhood amid the rubble.”
In a separate statement, the terror group accused Israel of using the kites as a “pretext” for airstrikes in central Gaza on Sunday, in which three people were killed according to the Hamas-linked civil defense rescue service.
The UN spokeswoman highlighted that Sunday’s statement was only the latest in a string of threats.
“We continue to see unacceptable rhetoric coming from the highest level of the Israeli authorities, showing utter contempt for international human rights and humanitarian law, and advocating and inciting violence amounting to atrocity crimes,” she said.
Katz recently found himself in similar hot water after boasting that the IDF was “here to stay” in southern Lebanon and was “destroying all the houses” there.
US President Donald Trump’s administration rushed to condemn those remarks, with a State Department official arguing that Katz’s comments flew in the face of Jerusalem’s assurances that it had no territorial ambitions in the country.
The Times of Israel Community.