Injured boy makes headway with landmine issue

Daniel Yuval, who lost his leg after stepping on an Israeli landmine, has managed to raise awareness of the issue. Photo / Supplied

After losing his leg to a landmine, Daniel Yuval vowed he would fight to rid Israel of them

When the friendly boy with the shock of black curly hair and alert blue-green eyes answers the door, the last thing you would think is that he had undergone a dozen operations since losing a limb in a horrific accident three months ago.

His stride is so firm that it's a moment before you even notice he is fitted with a prosthesis where his right leg was before it was blown off by a landmine planted in the Golan Heights more than four decades earlier.

Though accurate, "self-possession" and "determination" seem strangely banal attributes when applied to 11-year-old Daniel Yuval.

It's not just that he managed to walk his first steps within a month of his injury, or that he unflinchingly allowed his dressings to be changed without any form of analgesic, or that he has already made up for all the time he lost from school. It's also that he has persuaded a majority in the Israeli parliament to support clearing some 260,000 landmines that currently hold hostage an area about the size of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv together - 1 per cent of Israel and the Occupied Territories.

It was back in February that Guy and Tali Yuval, Daniel, their other son and three daughters, decided to make a detour to the Golan Heights, where snow had freshly fallen, on their way to visit the children's grandparents.

Yuval left the two younger girls with their mother in the car, while he, Daniel, 12-year-old Amit, and 8-year-old Yoav walked into the Mt Avital nature reserve.

"We threw snowballs and played around for about five minutes," said Daniel. "Then I remember taking a step forward and I heard the explosion. For a few minutes I don't remember much. My father picked me up."

Recognising that his son's leg had been severed by a landmine Yuval applied a tourniquet to Daniel's right leg while gripping the left one, also bleeding from shrapnel. Not knowing where other mines might be, he followed the footprints left by his family and others to make a grim, ginger, 10-minute journey back to safety. "Daniel told me to make the tourniquet tight, and he asked me at one point if we could stop for a second and attach his leg back on." In fact he seemed as concerned about his sister as himself. "He didn't cry at all."

It was later that, as Daniel wrote in a letter to all 120 Knesset members, he realised the full extent of what had happened, and what it meant.

"When I awoke from the surgery at the hospital and saw my amputated right leg," he wrote, "I told my mum that I wanted no one else to ever be hurt by a landmine, and that I mean to do something about that."

This turned out to be an understatement. Since then he has launched a high-profile campaign, in which he has managed to speak to a range of senior government figures culminating in a visit to the Knesset this month. On that visit, he spoke to a meeting of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee which is now promoting a bill to set up a mines clearance authority. The cost of the task is estimated at about $89.4 million. Like the US, China, India and much of the Middle East, Israel is not among the 158 signatories of the 1997 UN convention against the use of landmines.

Daniel's unlikely lobbying was greatly helped by Survivor Corps, the anti-landmine organisation founded by veteran US campaigner Jerry White. White, who himself lost a leg to a mine while hiking in the Golan in 1984, helped to draft the 1997 convention. He saw that Daniel - an Israeli boy from a middle class family - had rare potential to galvanise Israel's political establishment. White said: "In the international landmine campaign, we had a tipping point with Princess Diana ... Daniel Yuval is the tipping point where Israelis woke up."

So has made a big change already? "I hope I will make a big change, but I haven't seen that change yet. The bill has to go through the Knesset three times before it becomes law. Only when it will pass will I make a big change."

This is not a case of pushy parents urging their son on. Yuval says he is "apolitical" and would never normally have had the "energy" for a visit to the Knesset had it not been for the determination of a son who has always been strong-willed.

Einat Wilf, a Labour member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs committee who is backing the new bill, says Daniel's campaign has provided a "moment of grace" in which the long-ignored issue of mine clearance is engaging the Israeli public and political establishment.

Nevertheless she envisages that, even if the bill is passed, progress could be gradual. The first target would be the Israeli border areas with Jordan, with whom they have a peace treaty, followed by "non-operational minefields" in Golan Heights. Removal of those in the West Bank could be part of any peace deal with the Palestinians, she thinks. But Daniel will be keeping up the pressure.

Both of his parents are struck by his positive attitude despite periods of acute pain. Passionate about football, he hopes, artificial limb technology permitting, to play again one day.

- Independent