Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said Tuesday that Israeli snipers should be deployed to counter Palestinian rioters sending incendiary kites over the border.
Israel Fire and Rescue Services said over 350 fires have been sparked in Israeli communities near the border since the Palestinians launched their incendiary kites campaign in late April.
Some 7,000 acres of forest and agricultural land on the Israeli side of the border have been reduced to ash, causing tens of millions of shekels in damage and affecting every community in the area.
Daniel Ben-David, a forestry official with the Jewish National Fund, said some kites had been decorated with swastikas or the Palestinian national colors, but more recently were made of transparent nylon sheeting.
"Terrorism is terrorism and should be treated as such. Anyone who puts a firebomb or any other harmful device on a kite is a terrorist," Erdan said.
"Our enemies keep looking for new ways to undermine the Israeli public's resilience and they target, first and foremost, the residents of the Gaza-vicinity communities. We will do everything in our power to bolster them and at the cabinet, we were told that a solution to kite terrorism is underway."
The IDF has been testing drone technology to counter the threat posed by incendiary kites.
"I expect the IDF to handle these kite flyers exactly as they would any terrorist, and the IDF's targeted assassinations must also apply to these kite flyers," Erdan said.
Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon visited the Gaza-vicinity communities Tuesday, and echoed the sentiment, saying, "There is a solution to kite terrorism, which is indeed terrorism. … A terrorist who sends an incendiary kite [over the border] will meet the same fate as a terrorist who fires a rocket.
U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt described the kites as "not harmless playthings or metaphors for freedom [but] propaganda and indiscriminate weapons."
