Given that the five horns of the mine need only to be moved 3mm in any direction to detonate the explosive, many salvagers died.Mr Wariyah, now a plainclothes policeman, neatly dressed and with realistic-looking plastic hands, said that in the hamlet he came from 12 people were killed by mines and more were seriously injured, For all his skill with mines, his hands were amputated after a mine blew up in 1999.Mr Wariyah used a screwdriver to prod the soil for mines, though most are on the surface. During the eight-year war with Iran, Saddam, short of troops, tried to defend his northern front with great belts of minefields.The worst place in Iraq for mines today is Penjwin, a small town in a basin between the mountains, surrounded on two sides by Iranian territory. Captured and recaptured by the Iranian and Iraqi armies, both sides laid gigantic minefields which are still exploding.Tahir Mahmoud, in a wheelchair at his house in the Penjwin, returned to his village near by in 1992 It was in ruins, he said. “But I thought the narrow road to my farm had been cleared.” He was wrong. A mine exploded causing injuries so severe that both legs had to be amputated.Awad Mustapha, a neighbour, shows an artificial right foot.

He lost his own when he was six, treading on a mine in his back-yard while he was playing football. This time, he was back in business, having just procured enough money to issue tenders for clearing 50 minefields out of an estimated 4,000.The oldest active minefields date from 1974 and were laid by the Iraqi army suppressing the Kurdish rebellion Mines protected every Iraqi army post. Soldiers, he says, were hit, before they forced the settlers down from vantage points.Israeli soldiers and police are still entrusted with ensuring that the settlers do not get their way and that the Sharabatis return to their home This is a struggle that may have only just begun.. Even in comparison with other landmines, the Valmara 69 is a menacing object. Five horns stick out of its head making it look like a miniature Dalek.
Touch any of them and, propelled by a small charge, the device jumps into the air to waist height and explodes, spraying 1,200 lethal metal fragments 50 yards in all directions.”The Valmara is one of the most dangerous of the mines and difficult to defuse,” said Gafar Gafor Abbas Wariyah, a veteran Kurdish peshmerga, famous in northern Iraq for defusing 107,000 mines, before a premature explosion tore off his hands.The mountains and plains of Iraqi Kurdistan compete with Afghanistan for the title of the most mine-ridden country in the world. “The whole neighbourhood turned out and tried to enter the house. Then we formed a human chain and to stop them and they were shouting, ‘Nazis, fascists, why are you helping the Arabs?”’He says settlers repeatedly threw rubbish, including soiled nappies, into the Sharabatis’ courtyard, and makes no secret of his antipathy to the Hebron settlers (he mentions the chilling graffiti depicted in last year’s exhibition: “Arabs to the Gas Chambers”), or his belief that Israel should not be in the occupied territories.But he adds: “I think some of these people will fight to the last drop of blood to stay in Hebron You have here some of the most militant settlers of all These are not the people of Gush Katif.

I have seen them do things not part of the Jewish religion, destroying cemeteries, hitting old men and women, children hitting them with stones.”Since rebuilding started, Mufid Sharabati says the workers were attacked by 25 settlers for 20 minutes with stones, bottles and eggs. And he added: “One minute we are protecting them, then we end up fighting them.” That was when they would be forced to intervene when Palestinians were attacked or their shops and other premises were broken into by settlers.Mr Boumfeld says he was on patrol in March 2003 when they found the door of the Sharabati house open and evidence of recent entry The patrol called army engineers to reweld the door. However, he quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at the seminary.Yet two years later, at the age of 16, he was unable to dodge compulsory military service. “Where we are living now is on top of ruins of [Jewish] people who lived here for more 400 years.” Mr Wilder would not for a second apply a similar argument to any of the 900,000 Arabs who fled or were expelled from their homes in the 1948 war of independence.He says the settlers are not trying to drive the Arab population from Hebron but adds: “If you’re asking me, ‘Do I cry when an Arab leaves?’ the answer is no, any more than I expect they would cry about me leaving.”Mr Wilder expresses enthusiastic support for the army as the settlers’ protector, but is angered when it is used “as policemen” against the settlers.