Photo: Flash90

W

e’re standing in a cornfield — a setting this journalist from Kansas knows very well. Although the corn isn’t “as high as an elephant’s eye,” as a popular American song once boasted, the bright green stalks swaying in the wind show promise of producing a good crop.

The field on the other side of the dirt road is a different story. Scorched earth is the only way to describe the devastation. If a fantasy writer wanted to describe a landscape located in some fictional Kingdom of Death, a place where the ground is blackened ash and devoid of vegetation, this would be it.

Only it’s not fiction. It’s Kibbutz Ohr Haner, one of the latest victims in a two-month conflict where Palestinians are employing an old-new technology to harm and harass Israelis living near the border with Gaza: kites.

In early June a kite was set on fire and launched from deep inside the Gaza Strip. Buoyed by a strong west wind coming from the Mediterranean Sea, the kite blew into the kibbutz and landed in this field, which is about a quarter mile from the kibbutz’s residential area.

“One kite can burn an entire field,” comments Yoram Levy, spokesperson for the Israeli Fire and Rescue Authority. “If we hadn’t worked properly and quickly, the fire would have entered the living quarters of the kibbutz.”

Not Kids’ Stuff

A kite usually conjures up a childhood image of summer vacation — lazy afternoons at the beach or in the park. This spring the Palestinians, with their gift for creating mayhem and destruction, co-opted kites for their terror arsenal.

The kites, which cost only a few dollars to make, stand as tall as an adult man. The simple wood frame is covered with transparent plastic, so it will escape detection in the sky. The kites are equipped with a long paper tail, at the end of which are gasoline-doused rags that have been set on fire. Sometimes there are also metal wires that run from the kite to an attached canister filled with gasoline, to prolong the burning. Sometimes explosives are attached.

The west wind carries the kite over the border into Israel. When it lands, the kite starts a fire, which is helped along by the already dry vegetation baking under the Israeli summer sun. So far, thousands of acres of agricultural fields, as well as nature reserves managed by the Jewish National Fund, have been burned by these firebomb kites, with an estimated economic loss of $2.5 million.

Definitely not kids’ stuff. But try telling that to the rest of the world.

Apparently, though, the staff at Israel’s Government Press Office (GPO) are eternal optimists, because that’s what they tried to do when they recently invited approximately 30 journalists representing publications and wire services from around the world to tour a few kibbutzim and lookout points close to the Gaza border. The tour was scheduled in anticipation of June 7, the secular anniversary date of the 1967 reunification of Jerusalem.

June 7, a Friday, was also the last day of Ramadan. The IDF and the Israeli Fire and Rescue Department were expecting trouble — and they got it. More than 10,000 Arab rioters stormed the separation fence, hurling rocks and grenades, and burning tires. They launched kites as well, setting off 17 fires on the Israeli side of the border. The advance tour was therefore also perhaps an attempt to preempt an obvious question: Why doesn’t the government do something to stop the kites?

At our first stop, Kibbutz Ohr Haner, located northwest of Gaza City, Yoram Levy and Yigal Zohar, head of the southern region’s Fire and Rescue Department, explain what firefighters, working with the Israeli Army and the Jewish National Fund, are doing to prevent this area from turning into a burned-out war zone. First, though, Levy reiterates the challenge they are facing: “The army is watching as the Palestinians send the kites over the border. But there is no way to know where a kite will fall. The wind can blow it anywhere.”

For the fire department, that means having to be ready to deploy their men and trucks anywhere in the area at a moment’s notice. Of course, that’s what firemen do the world over. But in contrast to a typical fire station in the United States — which responds to just one actual fire every 22 days, according to the National Fire Protection Association (an American fireman today is much more likely to be respond to an EMT call than a fire) — the command center at the Sderot fire department has responded to over 450 actual fires caused by burning kites during the past 60 days.

To do that, Zohar has had to beef up his staff, supplementing the two firemen usually based in Sderot, with additional substations staffed with firefighters from the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv areas. He has had to borrow fire trucks, too — including a bulletproof fire truck usually on call in Judea and Samaria. His personnel have been equipped with additional gear that American firefighters almost never wear: bulletproof vests and helmets.

“If a red alert siren goes off, warning of a mortar attack while the firemen are working in a field,” Zohar comments, “all they can do is lie down. There is no place to run to for shelter.”

Some fires can be put out quickly, but others, such as the one at Ohr Haner, took around ten hours to extinguish. That was with 12 fire trucks working to put out the blaze. While Zohar and Levy say they lament the environmental damage and loss of animal life, it’s the fear that one of those burning kites will kill people that keeps them on their toes — and searching for new ways to fight these latest acts of terrorism.

Droning On

If the Israeli army sees when the kites are launched, through their camera-equipped unmanned drones that continuously survey the border, why can’t IDF soldiers down the kites before they reach the border? Or kill the kite launchers?

Colonel Nadav Livne, commander of the IDF unit dedicated to research and development of technology for operational purposes, surveys the increasingly restive crowd. Journalists are known for being pushy, and now the group is pushing for a more proactive response to the problem, which seems likely to go on indefinitely.

Commenting that he doesn’t set IDF policy, which currently allows the army to destroy the kites only after they reach Israeli territory, Livne also insists that his unit has responded quickly and effectively to the threat. At the forefront of the fight is a new unit of between 10 and 20 soldiers who are experts at operating mini-drones. While in civilian life these soldiers played with mini-drones for fun, today they are using their skills to shoot down the kites.

One of these soldiers, who can’t be identified for security reasons, gives a demonstration, while Livne explains how these remote-controlled dogfights work. A mini-drone can crash into a kite, a “hard kill,” and rip it with its propellers, so the kite quickly falls to the ground. Another tactic is for the mini-drone to catch the kite and bring it to the ground slowly. The third option is… let’s just say the army has other options that Livne is not allowed to reveal.

According to Livne, the mini-drones have intercepted about 500 kites and helium balloons during the few weeks they have been in use, an interception success rate of about 90 percent. The mini-drones are only minimally damaged by contact with the kites and can be used over and over again.

While that’s good news for the mini-drones, the area’s residents aren’t so sanguine.

Not Burned Out

Kibbutz Nachal Oz, located south of Sderot, is the Israeli settlement that is closest to the border with Gaza. In fact, their agricultural fields stretch right up to the border.

“We’re not suicidal,” says Daniel “Danny” Rachamim, a spokesperson for the kibbutz and head of its agricultural irrigation system. “We came here to build a life.”

Rachamim arrived at the kibbutz about 40 years ago. A long-standing peace activist — most of the members of the area’s kibbutzim are liberals who usually vote for the Labor Party — Rachamim says he remembers the days when it was possible to go into Gaza without fear, and interactions were pleasant and peaceful. He even invited a few of his Palestinian friends to his wedding.

Today, he is standing in a burnt-out field, just one example of the devastation that has been wrought in his kibbutz, which depends solely upon agriculture for its livelihood. Along with the lost crops, about $200,000 worth of damage, the irrigation system has been severely damaged and will need to be replaced.

But the damage can’t be figured only in terms of potatoes and dollars. The kibbutz has had its share of red alerts over the years and the constant barrage has taken its emotional toll. Rachamim mentions his own daughter, whose entire body shakes uncontrollably when the siren goes off.

“It takes several hours to calm her down,” he says. “The problem is that you never know when the next attack will be. We are standing here — there could be an attack now.”

At least sirens go off before a missile attack. There is no such warning for kites.

“About three weeks ago one of the kibbutz members was sitting on his balcony reading the newspaper, and all of a sudden a kite joined him,” says Rachamim. “It wasn’t on fire, but it could have been.”

Because some of the kites are booby-trapped with explosives, there is also a fear that the kibbutz’s children might play with them. “We got an order from the army not to touch the kites — not to let the children touch them,” he says.

Despite the financial losses and emotional turmoil, Rachamim says he is still optimistic that one day there will be peace. “People can change their attitudes,” he insists. “People can build, and people can destroy.”

At the same time, he has a message for the Palestinians engaged in these kite wars: “We will continue to work the land to the last meter. We’re not budging from here.”

Nothing New Under the Sun

During the press office tour, Yigal Zohar mentioned that this wasn’t the first time that kites have been used in warfare. Here are a few highlights from military history:

• China, 202 CE: When a general’s troops became cornered, he attached harp strings to kites. When the kites were flown over the enemy’s camp, under cover of darkness, the kites emitted an eerie sound that the soldiers thought were warnings from the gods. Petrified, the enemy troops fled.
• China, 1232: Once again using kites for psychological warfare, this time the Chinese used kites to drop leaflets into a prison. The leaflets incited a riot, which led to the prisoners escaping from the compound.
• United States, 1860s: During the American Civil War, the Union Army used kites to scatter leaflets over Confederate troops. The leaflets tried to entice enemy troops to desert and sell their weapons and horses to the Union Army for cash.
• United States and Europe, early 1900s: Before the airplane was invented, or the parachute, inventors in Europe and the United States vied to invent a box kite that could lift a soldier off the ground and enable him to spy on enemy troops. While some of the attempts were technologically possible, none were practical enough to be used in the field.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 714)