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Gaza Kids Seek Kite World Record
Thousands of children in the Gaza Strip on Thursday sought to break the world record for kite flying in a rare moment of respite from the war-battered enclave’s daily life.
More than 6,000 boys and girls gathered on a sandy beach in northern Gaza to fly more than 3,000 kites, according to the officials of the UN agency that organised the event.
If the figure is confirmed by Guinness the event will hold the new record for the highest number of kites flown simultaneously — the previous high of 710 kites was reached in northern Germany last year.
The colourful kites were built as part of activities at the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) summer camps which hosted more than 240,000 children this year.
“Half of Gaza’s population are children, these children are world class. Today they are going to break the world record of the number of kites flown,” said John Ging, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza.
UN officials said Guinness did not send an adjudicator because of the security situation in Gaza and that the new record has to be confirmed by the organisation.
Many of the children in the territory still bear psychological scars from Israel’s devastating January offensive where some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, mainly civilians, including more than 300 children.
Israel, which wants to crush any Palestinian liberation movement, responded to Hamas’s win in the elections with sanctions, and almost completely blockaded the impoverished coastal strip after Hamas seized power in 2007, although a ‘lighter’ siege had already existed before.
Human rights groups, both international and Israeli, slammed Israel’s siege of Gaza, branding it “collective punishment.”
A group of international lawyers and human rights activists had also accused Israel of committing “genocide” through its crippling blockade of the Strip.
Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air, sea and land access to the Strip.
The Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza’s sole border crossing that bypasses Israel, rarely opens as Egypt is under immense US and Israeli pressure to keep the crossing shut.
Fatah has little administrative say in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and has no power in Arab east Jerusalem, both of which were illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.
Israel also currently occupies the Lebanese Shabaa Farms and the Syrian Golan Heights.
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Middle East Online