Nine-year-old Arkan Radi sat inside his family's tent in a displacement camp in Al-Zawayda in the central Gaza Strip, carefully making a small kite.
He cut the paper, attached thin wooden sticks, tied the string and chose colours resembling those of the Palestinian flag. He imagined it rising above the rows of tents as he and his friends ran after it.
For Arkan, it was supposed to be nothing more than a summer game and a brief escape from the tents, rubble and fear that have defined much of his childhood.
But when he finally stepped outside carrying the kite, his parents stopped him. At first, Arkan could not understand why.
"I made it to play with my friends," he told The New Arab. "I spent days working on it. I wanted to fly it and chase it after it, but my parents told me not to go out with it. I don't understand why they're afraid of it. It's just paper and string."
Wiping away his tears, he added, "I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want to play like children everywhere. We're even afraid of playing now."
Radi, his father, told TNA that "I would never have stopped Arkan from flying a kite if it were not for recent Israeli threats to target people launching kites from Gaza."
For days, Israel's concern over kites and balloons launched from Gaza has intensified, turning children's toys into a "security issue".
Israeli media claimed that several kites from Gaza had landed near areas surrounding the besieged coastal enclave.
In statements concerning some of the incidents, the Israeli military acknowledged that no suspicious materials or explosives were found and that the kites posed no danger to the public.
Israeli Defence Minister Yisrael Katz ordered the military to act "very forcefully and immediately" against kites and balloons launched from Gaza, treating them like drones.
"A balloon is like a kite, and a kite is like a drone, whether it carries explosives or not," Katz boasted.
Netanyahu and Katz warned that ongoing launches could lead to wider war, including targeted killings and evacuations.
They claimed they had warned Hamas that "if the launches toward Israel do not stop immediately, the army will increase targeted killings of those responsible", while also threatening to "evacuate residents from areas from which kites, drones, and balloons are launched."
Thus, the kites made of paper, string and wooden sticks have become entangled in a security narrative involving targeted killings, military raids and evacuation threats.
In Gaza, however, the question is far simpler: how did a children's toy become a source of fear?
"My son doesn't know anything about politics or what Israel is saying," Radi said. "He sees a kite and wants to play with it. But we adults know what it means when Israel threatens to target those who launch these kites, so we stopped him."
"We're afraid for him of anything that might attract attention. In Gaza, a child can't know where the danger is coming from. He might go out to play, and suddenly the whole area becomes a target," he added.
What hurts him most, however, is that kites were never a form of resistance for Gaza's children. They were simply a familiar summer pastime.
"Children here used to make and fly kites during the summer. It's perfectly normal for us. What's wrong with a child flying a kite? Why should a child be afraid of the sky too?" he asked.
A summer game turns into a source of fear
In another displacement camp in central Gaza, 13-year-old Mohammed made a kite with the help of his older brother. He chose several colours and attached a long tail, hoping it would rise high above the camp.
"Every year when summer comes, we make kites and go to an open space to fly them," Mohammed told TNA. "This isn't the first time I've done this, but this year my mother was very scared."
"She told me the Israelis could see us and shoot us. I don't want to die because of a kite. So, I kept it with me and didn't fly it," he said.
His mother, Ruba, said her fear was not of the kite itself, but of what could happen if Israeli forces saw her son carrying one.
"My son doesn't understand what's going on around him. He sees other children playing and wants to join in. But we've lived through war, and we know that anything can become a reason for bombing," she added.
"We want our children to laugh, even for just one hour. We don't want them to grow up afraid to play, but at the same time, we can't risk their lives," she explained.
Meanwhile, Hamas has rejected the Israeli narrative, describing the focus on kites as an attempt to create new justifications for escalation against Gaza.
Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said the kites being discussed by Israel were essentially "children's toys in displacement camps", warning of the consequences of Israeli threats to target those who launch them.
"These threats, based on fabricated pretexts, are an attempt to justify the continuation of aggression and violations against our people, even going so far as to threaten children in the Gaza Strip," Qassem said.
He called on the US administration and mediating and guarantor states to pressure Israel to halt what he described as its "unbridled aggression" and not use the issue to undermine the ceasefire process.
Turning a toy into a pretext
For Gaza-based Palestinian political analyst Mustafa Ibrahim, the controversy over kites cannot be understood solely by whether they pose a physical threat.
"Rather," he told TNA, "it reflects the broader political and military context surrounding Gaza."
"When an unexploded kite becomes a security issue that warrants threats of assassination and evacuation, it means the issue transcends the actual danger posed by this tool," Ibrahim said.
"Israel is trying to portray everything coming from Gaza as a potential security threat, even when it involves children's toys. The danger here is not in the kite itself, but in its use as a pretext to broaden the scope of targeting," he added.
Ibrahim also linked the rhetoric to Israel's domestic political environment and the pressures facing Netanyahu.
"Israel's security rhetoric serves Netanyahu at a sensitive political moment because it allows him to appear as a leader who confronts any threat, no matter how small, and diverts attention from larger political and security issues," he explained.
He warned that turning incidents involving kites into grounds for military action could have serious consequences for civilians in Gaza, particularly amid the fragility of the ceasefire and the territory's continuing humanitarian crisis.
"The problem is that this rhetoric could quickly escalate from political threats to military action," he said. "Then the price won't be a kite that landed somewhere, but entire neighbourhoods are facing evacuation orders or airstrikes."
For children like Arkan and Mohammed, politics seems distant and incomprehensible. They see only a paper kite, summer wind, and fleeting childhood they try to reclaim. But in Gaza, even the sky is fearful.