Armed and unarmed environmental violence: the case of incendiary kites and balloons in the Gaza–Israel conflict

When does symbolic violence turn into real violence? This article explores this issue through the case of the Gaza civil resistance campaign of March 2018. Claimed to be a Gandhi-style nonviolent campaign, it involved launching incendiary kites across the fence that burned thousands of acres of farmland and fields. The organizers insisted these kite attacks were only symbolically violent, did not target people, or pose a significant threat to civilians. By contrast, this paper argues that incorporating incendiary kites and balloons constitutes not only bona fide violence but also outright armed attacks despite being conducted as part of a nonviolent struggle. This analysis has far-reaching implications for the limits of Nonviolent Resistance as a strategic tool that permits inflicting mild harm on the assumption that such harm is a lesser evil than that of armed struggles.