KIBBUTZ NAHAL OZ, SOUTHERN ISRAEL — Living in this desert farming community half a mile from Gaza for more than 40 years, Dani Rahamim has seen his fair share of dry seasons and the long-running conflict’s impact on daily life. Still, nothing could prepare him for this summer, in which he’s lost 320 acres of wheat to fires sparked by flaming kites and balloons launched into Israel from Gaza. Standing in his blackened field, sprinkled with ashen eucalyptus trees, their limbs cut off and their leaves fallen, he picks up a sprig of wheat that turns to dust. “The wheat fields burn fastest because they’re already dry,” he says. In charge of irrigation at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, the 64-year-old Israeli farmer worries his already-dry sunflower fields will be next as the smell and sight of another fire nearby burns even more land. Near Gaza, Dani Rahamim's farm has acres of charred sprigs of wheat. He’s lost 320 acres of wheat to fires sparked by flaming kites and balloons launched into Israel from Gaza during the latest attacks. Since March 30, protesters in Gaza have launched thousands of kites and helium balloons laden with explosives, molotov cocktails and other incendiary material over the border into Israel. The resulting fires have burned nearly 8,000 acres of land, with the vast majority of scorched earth consisting of agricultural fields and nature reserves. Thousands of animals have choked to death, said a spokeswoman for the Nature and Parks Authority. Some species have lost their natural habitat. The conflict, in short, has created an ecological disaster. Ecologists grimly predict a full recovery could take years. The damage caused by these seemingly harmless kites and balloons has already surpassed that of the 2010 Carmel Forest fire, which Israel required the help of nearly a dozen other countries to extinguish. The damage protesters have caused is not only hurting Israelis, but Gazans themselves. The wheat from Rahamim’s fields could have fed people in Gaza. Indeed, much of the flour Israel delivers to Gaza in the form of daily humanitarian aid comes from the wheat fields in these burning border communities, says Alon Eviatar, a Gaza security expert and former adviser to Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. According to Israel’s Tax Authority, area farmers have suffered more than $3 million in damages, mostly from wheat crop losses. Prior to the eruption of violence on the Gaza border, says Eviatar, Israel was delivering 900 truckloads of daily aid to Gaza, including food, medicine, infrastructure materials and other supplies. Since the protests began, only a third of that aid has made its way in each day. The helium used to fill those balloons, for instance, has been siphoned off from Gaza's hospitals, depriving their already struggling medical system of yet another resource. Some of the kites and balloons have also led to blazes within Gaza. In May, protesters set fire to Israeli pipelines carrying gas and oil into Gaza - which already suffers a severe energy shortage - causing an estimated $8 million in infrastructure damage. Protesters have also burned thousands of tires to create smoke screens, leading civilians on both sides to inhale toxic air. Almost half of Israel’s land along the Gaza border has been affected by the fires, which show no signs of abating. Firefighters wrestled with 26 fires on Tuesday alone, including one at a preschool playground. Hamas, the militant Islamist party that rules Gaza, has called on Gazans to continue this new tactic, and is supplying the explosive kites and balloons to mostly young Palestinians. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, Israeli forces have killed 137 Palestinians and wounded 15,000 since protests began. Israel has defended its use of live fire as necessary in preventing thousands of rioters from breaching the border and attacking Israelis. Israel argues many of the casualties were Hamas operatives, a claim Hamas has confirmed. Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005. In 2006, Hamas was elected to lead the government, and in 2007, took complete control over the territory in a bloody battle with the rival Fatah party. The West Bank and Gaza remain divided, with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah, representing the West Bank. The U.S., E.U., Canada, and other governments consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Since Hamas took control of Gaza, both Israel and Egypt have maintained an air, land and sea blockade on this strip of land, home to 1.9 million Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority has also imposed sanctions on Gaza. While these protests began as a non-violent, grassroots demonstration, they have since been co-opted by Hamas. Israel has found ways to counter rockets from Gaza, most effectively with its Iron Dome system, which intercepts them. Sirens warn Israeli citizens of incoming rockets, and most homes and public spaces have a bomb shelter. Israel has also found solutions to Hamas’s attack tunnels, which reach deep into Israeli communities. The Israeli military has already destroyed dozens of them, and is now building a hi-tech fence to prevent future tunnel-building. Yet Israel has struggled to find a solution to kites and balloons. “It sounds like a joke, but it’s not,” says Eviatar. “We’re not talking about a child’s game. We’re talking about a new kind of weapon.”

Noga Gulst, who lives in a kibbutz near Gaza, calls the fires “more frightening” than rockets. “With the missiles we have warnings,” she says. “With the balloons and kites, you never know when they will fall and where they will fall. People go to their fields and come back crying, both from the smoke and from seeing their fields black.”

While Israel tries to develop a better solution, its military is using drones to intercept the balloons and kites. Yet that doesn’t prevent the fires, it merely minimizes their damage. In an effort to put pressure on Hamas to end the violence, Israel announced Monday it would close the border crossing which serves as Gaza’s primary terminal for commercial goods. Palestinians set fire to that crossing three times in May. Hamas called the closure a “crime against humanity" and promised “dangerous consequences.”

Rahamim, the farmer, disagrees with Israel’s reaction to the desperation in Gaza. He believes his government should ease restrictions on Gazans and negotiate a long-term solution to the dire humanitarian situation there. “Of course I support a Palestinian State,” he says. “Most people in Gaza want to live a normal life, but they are hostages of Hamas.”

A June poll found that a majority of Israeli respondents agree with him, favoring a lifting of sanctions on Gaza. “Closing the border will not solve this crisis,” says Rahamim. “Our government is always trying to just put out small fires. But this won’t put out these fires, and it won’t put out the big fire either — the big problem that is Gaza.”
Three rockets are fired at Israeli communities from Gaza. Two of them are intercepted by the Iron Dome.