GENEVA: The United Nations on Tuesday slammed Israel's threat to expel people from areas where kites, drones and balloons are launched from 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 towards Israel continued, after a recent increase in such incidents. Hamas has denied responsibility. Israeli media reported that 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.
The incidents have revived memories of waves of incendiary kites and balloons launched from Gaza in previous years, which sparked fires in agricultural lands in southern Israel. According to the reports, the Israeli military believes Hamas was behind the launches, which did not carry explosives, and may have been testing how Israel would respond. "Israel warns Hamas that if the launches towards Israel do not cease immediately, the IDF will take action to intensify targeted operations against those responsible... and will evacuate the population from areas from which kites, drones and balloons are launched," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday in a joint statement.
Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas's political bureau, said 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 Palestinian group accused Israel of using the kites as a "pretext" for air strikes in central Gaza on Sunday, in which three people were killed according to Gaza's civil defence 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.
Meanwhile, Israeli police raided a vocational training centre run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in an east Jerusalem suburb on Tuesday, in a move a far-right minister said aimed to "remove" the body from the site. The move follows repeated warnings by UNRWA that Israeli authorities were threatening its Qalandia training centre, located between the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Kafr Aqab and Qalandia refugee camp. The centre was established in 1952 and offers vocational training to around 340 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank every year.
"Making history! This morning we are starting work to remove UNRWA from Kafr Aqab," national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir posted on his Telegram. "Large forces of the Israel police are operating together with the relevant bodies to implement the law and remove UNRWA from the site," he added in a statement. "An organisation whose employees were involved in terrorism and which time and again served as a cover for Hamas has no right to exist for even one more second, and it has no place in Jerusalem and in the State of Israel," he said. — AFP
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