PALESTINIANS FLY KITES IN WEST BANK VILLAGE FESTIVAL

Residents of Burin, a Palestinian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, held their annual kite festival on a hillside overlooking land they say was partly lost to Israeli settlement. The event has taken place every summer since 2009 on territory the villagers state was confiscated by settlers. Ghassan Najjar, one of the festival's organisers, said the gathering carries a "political message" alongside its primary purpose as a children's event. Kites bearing the colours of the Palestinian flag flew above the hill, which overlooks Har Bracha, an Israeli settlement established in 1983.

Har Bracha is one of several Israeli settlements that encircle Burin, a village with a population of several thousand. The settlement is classified as illegal under international law. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued a warning as early as 2008 about settler attacks in the area, documenting shootings targeting residents and the uprooting of olive trees. Since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, the United Nations has reported a sharp increase in violence attributed to Israeli settlers in the West Bank, whilst several Israeli ministers have called for the annexation of all or part of the territory.

Najjar stated that the festival was intended to assert the village's claim to the land. "We want to tell the settlers that this is our land, this is our sky. If we can't reach those lands anymore, our kites can," he said. The event featured children's entertainers, music and families gathering on the hillside, with some kites flown in tribute to the Egyptian national football team. Najjar emphasised that children in the village deserved the right to play and have a good life.