Lethal legacy sullies holy site
Tradition has it that Jesus was baptised in the River Jordan at Qasr Al Yahud, but Israel planted a minefield in the area after the 1967 war. The Halo Trust wants to clear the site, but that doesn’t come cheap, writes Foreign Correspondent Naomi Zeveloff
‘ If it is cleared it will make a difference to millions of believers Ronen Shimoni Halo’s programme manager in the West Bank
QASR AL YAHUD // Last Saturday, a small stretch of the River Jordan was packed with pilgrims and tourists from around the world. Eritreans danced to the water for an infant’s baptism, Romanians wearing white gowns took photos and Kenyans blew a shofar – a ram’s horn – in front of the reeds.
They were all there to see the spot in this Holy Land waterway where tradition has it that Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist.
“Jesus was here,” said Alona Raykovski. She, along with her deaf husband and friends, had just immersed themselves in the river after signing a prayer in Russian sign language. “It’s a very holy place.”
Incongruously, it’s also a very dangerous place.
Qasr Al Yahud, as the site is known, is surrounded by landmines, planted by Israel after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war to secure its border with Jordan. The baptismal site, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is fenced off from the mines by barbed wire and steel reinforcing bars. Yellow and black signs with the word “danger” in Hebrew, Arabic and English warn people not to trespass further.
The Qasr Al Yahud gift shop acknowledges the contradiction, selling T-shirts printed with the “danger” signs alongside wooden crosses.
Based on Israeli records, the Qasr Al Yahud area has 2,599 anti-tank mines, and an unknown number of smaller, anti-personnel mines spread across 870,736 square metres.
Now, 50 years after the war, a British organisation, the Halo Trust, is planning to clear the minefield.
One of the most significant results of the project will be the restoration of seven churches and monasteries in the area, now cordoned off from the public. Israel booby-trapped these buildings to prevent Palestinian and Jordanian fighters from using them for refuge, said Ronen Shimoni, Halo’s programme manager in the West Bank.
“If it is cleared it will make a difference to millions of believers,” he said.
It will also no doubt boost tourism to the site, which already draws between 1,000 and 3,000 visitors a day and up to 10,000 a day on Christian holidays, according to Yoel Ziv, a park ranger at Qasr Al Yahud.
Qasr Al Yahud is the third-holiest site to Christians, after Jesus’s birthplace in Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It is also believed to be the place where the Israelites crossed into the Holy Land after wandering in the desert for 40 years.
The entire site has been off limits to the public since the 1970s as a closed military zone, but Israel began allowing access to it with the visit of Pope John Paul II in 2000.
Today, the abandoned churches, which date back to the British Mandate period, add a surreal quality to the baptismal site.
The road to Qasr Al Yahud goes past a Franciscan compound, where a beige pockmarked dome is visible beyond an iron gate topped by a cross. The churchyard is filled with the shrivelled stumps of palm trees. Birds circle overhead.
The Halo Trust received approval to clear the mines from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the eight church bodies that own property in the area – Greek, Franciscan, Armenian, Syrian, Coptic, Russian, Ethiopian and Romanian.
Mr Shimoni called the trust a “bridge” between Israelis and Palestinians on mine clearance. “It’s a win-win case,” he said.
The site is now an Israeli national park snug against the border with Jordan, which is visible from the other side of the river. Palestinians claim this part of the West Bank as their territory in a future state.
Halo runs other projects in the West Bank, and is now removing Jordanian mines from the Palestinian city of Jenin. Jordan controlled the West Bank between 1948 and 1967, and also plant- ed explosives there to defend against Israeli incursions.
Israel has made mine clearing a priority since 2011, the year after an 11-year-old Israeli boy, Yuval Daniel, lost a leg when he accidentally detonated a decades- old mine while hiking in the Golan Heights.
Israel will not allow Palestinians to work as manual de-miners, said Mr Shimoni, considering it a security risk. Instead, Halo hires Georgians to work on the ground and Palestinians to operate machines. The Israeli ministry of defence declined to comment on the arrangement. The mine- clearing project will take place in three phases. First Halo will survey the area. Then it will destroy the anti-tank mines and finally it will clear the churches and monasteries. The operation is expected to take three and a half months and will cost $1.5 million (Dh5.5m).
But mine clearing around Qasr Al Yahud has been delayed due to lack of funds. Since 2016, Halo has raised $230,000 for the first phase of the project, mainly from private churches. But it needs to raise another $400,000 to $500,000 to begin work.
Mr Shimoni is confident that the mines will be removed soon.
“It will not be a fantasy,” he said. “We will get there.”