Forgotten landmines

’In this moment, in all of the world, only the Palestinian people, they did not given them freedom.’

‘That is why I am here, to tell the people to pressure their governments. I am only one voice, but many people may listen to me. But you and I, we can do things, small things. We need to tell everything.’

This exchange of words was at the end of a meeting with the village council of the village of Husan, in the Bethlehem region.

‘There are thirty dunums of land mines, they are on fields in the outskirts of the village. At this moment the Israeli government did not bother to take them away. They are not even allowing the Roots of Peace (a non-governmental organization) to remove them. The Roots of Peace offered to take away but the Israeli will not allow them to do anything. The Palestinian authority could not either because it is in Area C under Israeli control. The USA wanted to take them from the land as well. Still the bombs are still there, and you do not know when they will go away.’

When I asked our local contacts from the United Nations Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Committee of the Red Cross, they were both aware of the landmines. My colleague and I on the other hand, were very surprise and decided to view the area. As a previous team had reported on them several years ago, we had assumed that they would have been long gone, because landmines would receive a high level of attention, or so we thought.

Taha, a member of the village council is pointing at a field in between three blocks of houses, without a fence or sign of warning. On the other side of the road there is a larger piece of land, and small yellow signs of warning. The landmines are remnants from the Jordan times, and nobody has died from walking on them since 1954. Yet they remain, and prevent the Palestinians from using the precious pieces of land they have. My colleague Mary and I are both looking with disbelief at the field and are terrified with the thought of a child trying to play on the field. The stress of knowing that the landmines remain must be a constant burden for the villagers in Husan. That there is land full of landmines in the region of Bethlehem – it shows the needs to continue our work for peace.