Israeli farmers scorched by latest attacks, coping with ecological disaster

Yardena Schwartz | Special to USA TODAY

KIBBUTZ NAHAL OZ, Israel – Living in this desert farming community a half-mile from the Gaza border for more than 40 years, Dani Rahamim has seen his fair share of dry seasons and the long-running conflict’s effect on daily life.

Still, nothing could prepare him for this summer, in which he has 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 that his already-dry sunflower fields will be next as the smell and sight of another fire nearby burns even more land.

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, most of it agricultural fields and nature reserves. Thousands of animals have suffocated, 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 predict a full recovery could take years.

The damage has surpassed that of the 2010 Carmel Forest fire, which Israel required the help of nearly a dozen other countries to extinguish.

The damage that protesters have caused is not only hurting Israelis but also 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 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, farmers have suffered more than $3 million in damage, most of it from wheat crop losses.

Before the eruption of violence on the Gaza border, Eviatar says, 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 has been siphoned from Gaza's hospitals, depriving an 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 has a severe energy shortage – causing an estimated $8 million in infrastructure damage. Protesters also have 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 the 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 150 Palestinians and wounded more than 15,000 since protests began. Israel has defended its use of live fire as necessary to prevent thousands of rioters from breaching the border and attacking Israelis. Israel says 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, it 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., European Union, Canada and other governments consider Hamas a terrorist organization. Since Hamas took control of Gaza, 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 also has imposed sanctions on Gaza. While the 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 interception system. Sirens warn Israeli citizens of incoming rockets, and most homes and public spaces have a bomb shelter. Israel also has found solutions to Hamas’s attack tunnels, which reach deep into Israeli communities. The Israeli military has destroyed dozens of them and is building a hi-tech fence to prevent tunnel-building.

Yet Israel has struggled to find a solution to kites and balloons.

“It sounds like a joke, but it’s not,” Eviatar says. “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 just minimizes the damage. In an effort to put pressure on Hamas to end the violence, Israel announced Monday that it would close the border crossing which serves as Gaza’s primary terminal for commercial goods.

Over the weekend, Hamas and Israel had some of the heaviest exchange of fire since the 2014 Gaza War. On Friday, an Israeli soldier was killed by Hamas snipers, followed by Israeli airstrikes on dozens of Hamas targets, including weapons storage facilities and command centers.

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 poll in June found that a majority of Israeli respondents agree with him and favor a lifting of sanctions on Gaza.

That seems less likely now, as Hamas shows no sign of giving in, and Israeli officials indicated this week that they are ready to go to war to end the daily provocations.

Rahamim wishes they would look at the big picture. “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.”