Crops were burned and some 800 dunam (200 acres) of farmland destroyed on Wednesday in another eco-terror attack by operatives flying firebomb kites over the security fence on the border from Gaza.
A field belonging to Moshavei HaNegev – an agricultural cooperative owned by the surrounding towns in the Gaza Belt region – went up in flames.
Eshkol Regional Council head Gad Yarkoni called on the government to find a solution to the terror, and to compensate the local farmers for losses already incurred.
“The issue of the [firebomb] kites has kept us very preoccupied in recent days, and requires a solution,” he said. “There is damage to the wheat and barley fields. Security personnel and farmers in the settlements are working overtime to extinguish the fires and not to let them spread and cause more damage.
“It will not break us and we will continue to work our lands up to the last meter,” Yarkoni added. But he said the local farmers “expect the state to compensate us for the damages. Our fields are the livelihood and the beating heart of the Eshkol Regional Council.”
In the Merhavim Regional Council, director Shai Hajaj said, “We must remind the Palestinian human rights groups that igniting fields is violence – violence that has already caused massive financial damage and is endangering lives.
“The igniting of fields by use of firebomb kites has become a daily event and is no longer limited to the ‘March of Return’ disturbances on Fridays,” he added. “We demand that the IDF put an end to this violence.”
Yona Schnitzer and TPS contributed content to this report.